Chosen of Eilistraee
by Anja Kidd
Summary: Far beneath the doomed city of Waterdeep, Eilistraee's unlucky Chosen (and his minions) find themselves set on a collision course with destiny. Rated M for language, sexual content, drow humor, and violence.
1. Prologue

SOLAUFEIN

It had been a little under five years since Solaufein had left the company of Aphra of Candlekeep, Child of Bhaal, Scourge of the Sword Coast and one-time Lady of the Iron Chair. Survival had been his only initial goal in leaving his homeland, and it was hard to picture what life might be like outside of survival when he was fairly certain he was going to die every day. He was genuinely surprised that he had managed to live as long as he had.

He knew the goddess in his heart and heeded the warning she'd given to him in a dream that spoke of a stranger coming, but he had determined upon leaving Ust'Natha that if the Handmaidens did not find him, then he would surely die in battle alongside the first woman to ever treat him as something other than a pet or a worm to grind under her boot. For battle was all he knew. It was the only thing he'd ever truly excelled at. Death was his only real skill. And she'd understood that, as no one else ever had - though unlike him, Aphra (Veldrin as he'd known her) had ever worried at the hundreds of souls she gave to death at her hands. The weight of her conscience drove her from Faerûn; his conscience had been suffocated to death by Lloth's whips long ago. He had breathed death all around him; it was how he'd flourished, how he'd lived with himself for so long. He didn't mourn his enemies since they were the reasons he was alive. The quick death he'd given to everyone that met his blade was a mercy compared to the pain of living. Such is life, in the Underdark.

When Solaufein did not die in Aphra's company and survived long enough for her to leave him behind, he felt lost. He thought he had known the woman's spirit, so close to his own, but where she had gone he knew he could not follow. He watched her change dramatically over their few (but highly eventful) years, as if she had finally succumbed under the burden of her fate. He understood, when others had not, that she had not really expected to survive it either. Both of them, in their own small ways, were in love with the idea of death. She'd had nowhere to go, had made too many enemies by trying to do too many things right. She was wanted on the Sword Coast as much as she was vaunted in Amn; for her strength, she was beloved by the weak and reviled by the strong, and so found no peace outside of her friends anywhere. The great library fortress she'd been raised in and always called home had forever exiled her for the crime of fulfilling their greatest monk's prophecy. Her back had bowed beneath the weight of the world's injustices.

She'd seemed lost to him, just as he had been by Phaere, the first person he'd ever loved. It was not the same as in the past; there was no hurt between them, no whips of torment or pain for he or Aphra. Rather, it was the most peculiar ache that began from the moment he'd last seen her smile in Saradush before she disappeared - an aching that did not eat at him, but remained settled in his chest in a place that only Aphra would ever reside. What he wanted out of life changed because of her; he didn't want an honorable death at her side for himself. He wanted Aphra and himself to be free to _live_ honorably instead. To give something back, for what they'd taken. Eilistraee taught that death could never be payment for sin. They had to live with their burdens, and carry on however they could.

In hindsight, it was not surprising that Aphra left; he allowed himself an amount of hope that the absence would do her heart well. Each of her and her siblings had been troubled immeasurably by their lot in life. It had taken them long to all reconcile, but since Sarevok had already died once for his crimes, Aphra declared that it made no sense to punish him further - and indeed, the man was instrumental in their greatest, and bitterest victory. As for Imoen, Solaufein understood upon meeting Aphra's sister that they were nearly inseparable - and he also understood why, for Imoen had the rare ability to make anyone smile or laugh no matter the circumstance. That part of the girl had never died, and caused her to become the glue that held their troupe together. When Imoen left to pursue her own interests then, it was only a matter of time before her sister followed suit, with nothing to tie her down. Of all her companions, only Solaufein and Jaheira were unsurprised at her sudden flight after the war ended. He allowed himself to hope that they might all meet again one day in happier times.

So Solaufein drifted as wood at sea and wandered blindly into the wilderness, the only place on the surface he could find any solace. The deeper in, the trees would block out the sun and it wouldn't be as glaring on his sensitive eyes. He knew that if he could not die in Aphra's service, then he would have to follow Eilistraee's moon to whatever fate awaited him. He had no ambition of his own but to follow the path that his feet would lead, and lived by his wits as best he could.

This nonchalant and indifferent attitude is precisely what landed him in the middle of a blizzard and nearly freezing to death outside of Nathan Hurst's farm. In some ways, the surface proved more dangerous than the Underdark - something he hadn't realized until then, having never seen snow in Amn. He'd spent two of his Lady's moon's in the cheerful duergar's care; once the dwarf had learned that Solaufein was no ordinary drow, he'd been quick to treat his wounds and his family swift to welcome him. It had bothered Solaufein at first for reasons he didn't quite understand, but made sense when Nathan pointed it out; drow society did not foster kindness, and viewed it as a weakness.

Once he had recovered and learned of his whereabouts, he found himself being directed by the farmer to a lonely dwarf named Drogan. Drogan of Hilltop was at the end of his personal adventures and settled down in the small village at the top of its namesake's hill to start a school for adventurers that were in precisely Solaufein's predicament - those who wished to learn, but had no means. Those who wished to travel, but had no direction. Those who wished to make a difference, but lacked ambition.

In all his centuries of darkness, Solaufein thought he had never encountered kindness until Aphra. His retrospect and time with Drogan had taught him that 'kind' was not an accurate word to describe the Bhaalspawn. Drogan was kind in that he offered food, words, and wisdom freely. Aphra had offered some solace in her kindred spirit, but she had nothing of herself to truly give. The world, or perhaps Irenicus, had taken what kindness she had to spare and returned only pain. That was a lesson she'd taken all the way to Saradush and beyond still. Through Drogan, Solaufein learned what real kindness was. And he finally understood that kindness could never be found at the edge of a blade - only mercy could be found there. Through Drogan, Solaufein learned who he himself was.

In the Adventurer's Academy, he honed his Common. He learned of his goddess in the first formal setting; he learned that there were other worshipers of her that danced and sang and drank under the moon and celebrated her beauty with their own. There were kin out there, he learned, like him - and he learned that it was his ambition to meet them. He knew now how, but felt just as he felt Eilistraee in his heart that one day his path would take him there, where he might finally find himself amongst his people truly free. He absorbed everything Drogan had to offer like a sponge and helped the other students when others inevitably came to the strange school to learn the same things as him.

He learned what vengeance was from the sly Dorna when she engaged him in a prank war. In exchange, he taught her to curse in Ilythiiri. He learned how to harden himself to discrimination from Xanos, the fiery half-orc who had seemed to have spent his entire life suffering from something outside of his control and had gained a lot of skill at throwing it back at the world. In exchange, he'd taught Xanos how to laugh at himself. He had learned infinitely more from the scholarly dwarf, however - how to smile, how to cook, how to walk the thin line between prejudice and proper judgment . . . He found, most importantly, a purpose beyond the path beneath his feet. He learned to read the world as he'd read the Underdark, and no longer feared the light or the vast open sky it dwelt in.

Or he thought he had. Then he met a strange, fearful, and gifted kobold named Deekin with a broken statuette and everything had changed.

In the span of but four scant months, he'd been beaten, almost eaten, stabbed in the foot, nearly gutted by undead, nearly gutted by Bedine in the desert, plundered ruins, been paralyzed and turned to stone, and finally had died. More had happened to him in those four months than had happened to him in the first three centuries of his life in Ust'Natha. He and the half-orc Xanos had been tasked with retrieving artifacts that had been in Drogan's safekeeping by order of the Harpers. The end result was a flying Netherese city named Undrentide ruled by a mad medusa named Heurodis, who had tried to kill kill him repeatedly after he'd survived her petrifying gaze thanks to Deekin.

In the end, the kobold proved himself the real hero of his own tale by killing the medusa while all Solaufein really did was help Xanos aim his hands so the sorcerer could destroy the mythal that kept Undrentide afloat above the Anauroch. He'd died there with Xanos feeling a little like Deekin's escort long before the city hit the ground, and fully expected that to be his strange end. He remembered being at peace with it, and a little sad that Deekin and Xanos wouldn't survive it either.

Solaufein had always hoped to die in an interesting way, if he couldn't die in a meaningful one - something to get a last laugh at, at the very least, was all he could ask for out of fate. He'd hate to think that he led so boring a life that he might live only to die in his sleep. Dying as a flying city crashes with you in it had never been in any of the scenarios he'd predicted of his own death. Gored by a giant boar that rampaged through a city perhaps, or tied to a gnomish ballista and shot at a target in a spelljammer battle, or dismembered by an angry hamadryad for stumbling on her nude, or losing an arm-wrestling match to a hook horror - any of these would have been preferable to dying as he had in Undrentide, bleeding out slowly and crushed to death by stone. He had been aware of his own state for some time, living but unliving under the broken rocks and dying slowly. He had heard the rats, and was a little grateful that they'd waited to eat his eyeballs until he was most certainly dead. Deekin hadn't been that lucky.

Undrentide, unfortunately, was the beginning of Solaufein's adventures. The only real upside to that series of events that had led to Drogan's, Solaufein's, Deekin's, and Xanos' deaths was that Deekin managed to write a best-selling book out of it by dramatizing the whole affair. How exactly the three of them survived certain death was a story Solaufein told to no one, and made Deekin promise to leave out of the book. The mystery had bothered readers for some time; the truth of it had certainly bothered Solaufein. It disturbed him to look at his own body and see no scars where he had earned them, or feel the pain of old injuries he'd learned from. He moved as he always had, but his body felt like it belonged to a stranger he used to know. He did not know himself after that, and felt like he had not known himself since.

The artifact responsible for their miraculous survival tumbled in between his fingers as he eyed it contemplatively, leaning against the deck railing of a schooner bound for Waterdeep. Ordinarily, having access to a pocket dimension was of great value. The Reaper, the entity in charge of the realm who had resurrected him and his fellows after the city fell, unsettled him even on good days. No matter how he'd tried to rid himself of the peculiar piece, it always returned to his pack. He'd given up on trying to throw it away and kept it at his side, tucked into his boot or a pocket.

He'd tried looking up seers, diviners . . . He'd even tried to gain entry to Candlekeep to look at their library using Aphra's name, but it had not availed him. If being a dark elf was not reason enough for refusal, the mention of the Bhaalspawn's name was. It seemed as though being labeled a 'hero' only helped him when it really hindered him. Eyes glassed over when anyone other than Xanos or Deekin, who were already aware of it, tried to examine it. None of Drogan's books in Hilltop had helped, and he'd yet to find a wizard that would give him the time of day, let alone find one he trusted enough to examine his inter-dimensional pocket-key. The Reaper, who controlled the portals and _appeared_ to answer to Solaufein, was frustratingly vague on the nature of the nexus and its access.

Waterdeep was his last resort. A city of a million was one large enough that he was certain he could lose himself in it. Blackstaff would not even notice. The small fortune he had to his name would be enough to grant him entry into Oghma's temple and pay for a competent augury on the small artifact. He'd been at peace with his death in the Netherese city, knowing that at least it had been for a purpose. His life after, on the other hand . . .

And so Solaufein played with the gem-encrusted piece in his hands while he slipped into reverie in his small cabin aboard the merchant ship The Leeward Star. His thoughts, feelings, and memories all swirled in and out of consciousness as his mind struggled to create a dream. Thoughts of his old life and friends all fell away as he succumbed to a deep rest, lulled by the slapping of the sea's waves against the outer hull.

In his cot, his mind found itself being pulled down. Down, into the ground, into the deep dark of the earth below, past the whispers of worms and graves, into a place he could call home. His eyes struggled for purchase as he found himself standing in a very strange dream. A voice spoke to him in Ilythiiri and he struggled to listen as his mind flooded with memories he'd pushed aside so that he might live.

"Proceed with the ritual, male." It was undoubtedly a drow female. "My sources say this one poses a threat to my plans, and my sources are infallible." The confidence of the voice alone was unmistakable. The voice was unfamiliar, but hearing his own tongue spoken after so long caused him to feel a sharp and sudden pang of homesickness. He knew it wasn't exactly healthy; one should not desire to return to a place that had only brought them despair, but he could not help it.

As he found himself remembering things he'd struggled to forget in his scant few years on the surface, a picture began to form in front of him. While he did not miss Ust'Natha, or the pain his home had brought him, he missed the warmth. The walkways. The elegant, spidery crawl of architecture that spread around the cavern, building into it and supporting. The glow of mushroom forests, the laughter of people that looked and thought and spoke like him, all of it rushed back to him in his reverie as the scene in front of him unfolded.

A host of drow stood before him in a circle bowing in supplication before an intricately carved circle. The room was full of carvings he knew to be native to the temple of Lloth; which one, he could not say because they all looked the same to him. He couldn't suppress a sneer as he took in the carving of the goddess that stood central to the chamber across an open pit on the far side of the temple's room - a great spider topped with the body of a lovingly carved obsidian female.

"What is this!?" The female voice seethed. He turned his attention toward a beautiful female in front of him. Lovely though she was, the contemptuous sneer on her face detracted from her beauty. Her met her gaze unflinchingly - her eyes were the red of arterial blood, her lips pale around clenched teeth as white as the knuckled grip she had on her whip. Her armor sparse, more decorative than functional and hid a surprising amount of curves for an elven woman. Her posture radiated a churning fury beneath this artful surface. Solaufein noted that the normal snakes were not on this Handmaiden's whip - rather it glowed with a magical energy. He could not tell if she was truly a priestess or not, but since she stood in the chamber of the Spider Queen and acted arrogant and commanding, he assumed so. Her sneer was practiced, but the rage was real. "A dhaerow male?! Is this a joke?" She cried out, staring at Solaufein. He dared not look away, but assumed she must refer to him - for he was at the center of the circle, and no other.

Her anger seemed to put the petitioners on edge, but none dared raise their head. A nearby male in wizardly robes of red and black in the drow fashion spoke up in a reedy voice. "Great Valsharess, we have performed the ritual to your—" The drow female's whip cracked out of her hand and wound around the neck of a nearby male. Solaufein did not flinch as the male was dragged forth with a cry of pain, and his neck snapped under the effort. It seemed to him to be a very characteristic thing for a female to do.

"You will speak when spoken to!" The one who was called 'Valsharess' lectured.

It seemed a useless point for her to make, to Solaufein, who watched the dream go about him dispassionately. A part of him missed his homeland, but he did not miss this - the senseless death, the domineering, the needless and pointless grandstanding. He doubted that she was a priestess in that moment, for one could not go about called oneself 'Valsharess' without incurring some wrath from the Spider Queen. Such a title was holy and reserved only for her.

"This . . . Worm will pose no threat to me," the drow female stated with assurance. She addressed her audience, but had her suspicious eyes narrowed on Solaufein. What her expression was, was something that Solaufein had trouble identifying. She carried herself with the usual arrogance of a Handmaiden, but there was a strange desperation in her eyes that he'd never seen in a female dark elf before. "No threat at all," she insisted. "For you will die before you ever face me. The people of Waterdeep will die screaming, and you - male - will do nothing to stop my ascension. Now, worms! Summon my Red Sisters!"

He thought about saying something to her. He could say something about Lloth being jealous, or make a pun on the 'worm' comment, but instead a rather juvenile insult he'd taught to Imoen many years ago when she had asked popped into his mind that made his lips curl involuntarily: "Dosst ilhar uriu vith xuil rothe, dosst ky'ostal zhahus beldraus a naut'kyn dothkarn." It was only a dream, after all, and he was better at killing than he was at wordplay. She seemed pretty outraged by the remark, if the scream indicated anything.

He returned to a deep reverie after the strange dream. His mind fed him foreign images and voices that floated past his awareness. Few found purchase in his waking thoughts when the sailor up top from the crow's nest alerted everyone to the presence of land. He remembered the vision with the not-so-Handmaiden who called herself Valsharess, the image of another drow female with eyes the color of skies that changed to a bright and glowing amber, the sight of a white wasteland plagued by blizzards, and a sword as black as night, and a voice he'd never heard but had always known had woken him by stilling all the sounds and images and whispering his name. Though he'd awoken to the sound with a start, hearing it as a whisper in his ear, there was nothing around him, and all was calm.

Solaufein continued thinking the whole thing was just a strange dream until he was denied entrance into Waterdeep. The city, it appeared, was under the siege of creatures that attacked from the shadows - beholders, duergar, spiders, and all manner of strange demons were appearing in the streets. Undermountain, the great dungeon of the mad wizard Halaster that lay beneath Mount Waterdeep - and the city's most famous tourist attraction - had been compromised. Dark elves had also been spotted, and poisonings had gone up a thousand percent. People had fled their homes. Guards had fled their posts. The Lords of Waterdeep had issued a call to adventurers from afar, seeking aid to discover the root of the attacks and purpose behind them. The Temple of Oghma was closed and abandoned, its library inaccessible while the city was under siege from the shadows of the Underdark.

He wondered at his luck; a dark elf, coming to try to rescue a city from invading dark elves. He'd had to flash the title of Deekin's book at the guards before they stopped pointing swords at him, and instead led him to a place called the Yawning Portal, where a defense force of adventurers was being mounted. Volunteers to send into the impossible maze of a dungeon to find the mad wizard held by even madder foes. It seemed an impossible quest, the kind that would lead to certain death and uncertain fate. Solaufein was good at achieving the impossible, and figured maybe if he saved the city _someone_ would finally consent to look at the Reaper's Relic and tell him what in the Hells it actually was.

Maybe. If he was lucky.

* * *

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

_Dosst ilhar uriu vith…_ your mom has sex with goats and your armor looks about as useful as the spidery offspring of the costumes in Lady Gaga's Paprazzi video and Madonna's 1990 pointy boob tour

_Dhaerow__…_the actual word for dark elves in their own language


	2. Undermountain

This started off as a late-night experiment about the idea of a drow paladin. Thanks to the EE of both NWN and BG, my enthusiasm for this world was renewed.

I will provide my own translations for the spoken Ilythiiri at the bottom of each chapter.

And here's how the names and their accents all sound in my head:

Hembercane = think of how you say 'remember,' for some reason he sounds like Alan Rickman to me.

Binne = Bee-nah (second syll. is short, should have a bounce to it), I read her in my head with a mix of a Glasgow brogue and a Geordie accent. Check out Anglophenia on youtube if you're curious about regional Britannic dialects.

Solaufein = Soul-au-feign (the 'au' as in f_au_lt or _au_gust), always read drow as having a slight Greek, Croatian, or Lebanese sound, because that's kind of what the language sounds like a combination of when you try to read it out loud. I guess think of Deanna Troi if you can't picture that.

I know in the game that there is a portal stone that takes you back to the surface, and it saves time. It doesn't make sense in a story, so it doesn't exist here. There are a lot of things I've altered, and I'm not interested in preserving what is canon. This is fiction written by a fan; you don't need to know anything about Forgotten Realms or the Neverwinter Nights games to read or understand it.

* * *

BINNE

One thing I'm known for is how loudly and often I complain about things; just ask my familiar, Hembercane. The dour twat was of no help at all when I'd been captured - bastard banished himself back into the astral plane with a smirk. I was so busy cursing at him that the rakshasa got a drop on me and sold me to the ogres on the second level. The ogres that kept me weren't very chatty to begin with, despite the odd eloquent mage one, but all things considered I really didn't want to try and test their patience. For the first time in my farcical life, I was keeping my loud mouth shut. It never failed to get me into messes; really, I should've learned to shut up much sooner. I could've avoided that whole druid debacle.

But while I was proving my arse useful by cooking and being a midwife, I did pass the time by muttering to myself about my situation. Really the only thing that kept me sane, I think. I'd been in worse spots, maybe. I was at least grateful it wasn't my arse but rather all the other insipid adventurers' arses on the line. I had safety from the nasty grigs and diseased harpies so long as I didn't try anything suspicious like escaping and continued to prove to be more useful alive than I was tasty. It helped that they were convinced my flesh tasted like sulfur and brimstone, in the words of the ogre mage that captured me. For the first time in my life, my demonic ancestry tipped the odds in my favor. Cooking sentient beings and being a midwife to the smelliest people in all of creation was marginally better than being the one getting cooked.

I'd be more grateful to Tymora for my small fortunes if it weren't for the blasted _smell__._ The smell of 'em was something like you wouldn't believe! I'll never forget the stench of that hideous place as long as I live, and I'd surely live a few centuries if I didn't do something monumentally stupid. I may have mentioned that I'd been stuck in worse positions; I'd run away from home straight into some haunted woods after I fled the accident that slew my twin brother, after which I'd nearly been eaten by a shadow dragon, and then I'd been held for weeks to be interrogated by Zhents before escaping and murdering some of them. Then I'd taken myself a jaunt home and got trapped in my home city that decided to go to war with itself while it suffered a debilitating plague during which I helped my father pile up half of my neighbors and light the pile on fire. After that I'd gotten shot in the side of my arse twice with arrows by the same bastard during the Luskan War. Then there was that time in the Underdark very briefly, when I'd been mistakenly summoned by a priestess of Lolth whom I managed to annoy enough into banishing me, which was ironically the least amount of maimed I'd ever been on an 'adventure.' One might say that I'd seen and smelled a lot of rotten shit, but I swear that Undermountain has been the worst-smelling place I have ever been in my long life. You would not believe some of the things I've endured; forget the misadventures, let's not overlook the fact that I'm a midwife to ogres.

Ogre children, by the way, are just as disgusting and mean-tempered as their parents. Even worse, if you can imagine. And I hate them more. I want to hit them. In their tiny ogre, baby faces.

I was happy enough to be alive, I just wished some of the idiot adventurers I had to cook for the blasted ogres would make themselves useful for once instead getting themselves captured and eaten. Was it too much to ask that Waterdeep, the City of bloody Heroes, the City of bloody Wonders, send in someone to save the day that wasn't a self-destructive moron? I'm hardly Ms. Heroine, but even I managed to make to that mentally challenged flesh golem on the second level before the kitties jumped me. Of all the ways to be enslaved, this was easily the most embarrassing.

It's not as if I could escape on my own, even if I had sincerely tried - not with the nasty power-repressing collar they'd had the gall and cleverness to place on me. Even if my familiar wasn't such an arsehole, I couldn't summon him with the bloody thing on, so I was all alone.

And see, I have this aversion to death. Dying once at the hands of Zhents was enough for me, thank you, and I've died twice at their hands within the same week. I've also been very close to death on numerous uncomfortable occasions, up to and including nearly getting sat on by a dragon. It's never fun. I also have a recently developed aversion to getting eaten. Of the two fools I'd hired to take me down here, one had already been eaten by ogres, understand – I'd been spared only because I spoke Ogreish and had proved my tailed arse useful. Growing up on a farm had never helped me until this exact moment in my life, but if I could bring foals into the bloody world, I could damn well bring an ogre.

Even had I escaped the disgusting ogres, I'd have all the blasted faeries in the southern dungeon to contend with. And even if I made it back down to the second level where I was captured, those rakshasa would just try to eat me again anyway! _Everything_ in Undermountain is trying to eat you, understand. Even the fae. Those grigs are evil little bastards and I wish them all horrible, painful deaths-by-suffocating-down-my-throat.

There's not a lot to eat in Undermountain that isn't poisonous or actively trying to eat you instead. I'm not ashamed to say I've eaten pixies. Someone has to! They're a menace.

Aside from all that, I was doing great. I was staying on the ogre mage's good side and apparently I was a decent enough cook. Well, for ogres, anyway. Who would've thought? And besides, it's not as if I'd spent all that much time in this dungeon anyway. Only about a month. Or a few months. Or a few years. I was having a hard time keeping track. Time got a bit runny in Undermountain. I should've saved myself a lot of trouble followed in mother's footsteps and become a cleric of something. Then, I could have led a boring life and committed suicide forthwith.

As I let my mind wander about (I had very few things to keep me occupied, other than spooking the old blue dragon a few hallways down) while I was doing the dishes, occasionally seeing if I could plot any new escape routes and wondering if that dragon in the south-eastern corridor ate as much as these ogres, I nearly missed him. Him being: The one adventurer that got through.

Said adventurer could have arrived at a much more fortuitous time, like, say, _four weeks ago__,_ or maybe four months ago, or was it four years ago? I'm not complaining or anything. Wouldn't want Beshaba to think I was ungrateful on account of her gracing my forsaken life. Would you believe I used to be cheerful? That was back in the time when I didn't miss the sunlight and the population of Undermountain weren't up in arms doing to Waterdeep what Cyric did to Bane.

So, the first adventurer. I was so preoccupied with my own mental world that I barely noticed him in the shadows – luckily I have sharp eyes or I wouldn't have caught him at all. I didn't have time to cry out, and I didn't intend to. I was startled enough that I did hear myself gasp a little bit, but that may have been him gasping. I imagine he was just as surprised to find someone alive down here as I was.

I had a little area away from the main ogre encampment set apart for me, but I wasn't allowed to go far. (They dropped me off raw meat sometimes as food, since eating the adventurers with them felt a little like crossing a line. I know I'm a cambion, but I'm not really all that nasty about it, promises.) The corridor next to it was used as a kitchen. This was the place that I was supposed to sleep, and it was small and humid and I hated it. At least it was lit, and it was marginally better than being eaten alive. So it's no surprise, in retrospect, that an adventurer of unlikely fate had managed to find me without getting detected by the ogres, since they avoided me when it wasn't midwife-time or dinner-time. Hard to believe _they_ think _I_ smell bad (though it'd been a while since I'd been allowed to bathe).

Anyway, I caught him in the shadows just as he was entering the room. He made no sound at all, but I saw his own shadow moving across the floor like water flowing over rocks. I couldn't see his face, only the edge of his feet and the tip of his hood in the dim light. "Who's about?" I hissed and squinted, cursing my vision under my breath.

Halaster had an odd sense of humor, so it was entirely possible this was some kind of trick, even though I knew for a fact that Undermountain was currently functioning under his absence. I hadn't seen his pet flesh golem since that one encounter, so I had to assume that Berger was gone as well. There'd been activity in the dungeon, I could sense it in the magic from the walls, but it was scattered. Between the Blackcloak's own ambient magic in Undermountain and the ogre's collar, I couldn't sense for shit. I was forbidden to leave the ogre mage's presence with the collar on - physically forbidden, literally - so I only knew what they told me. Not the most reliable source of current news.

The adventurer paused. "No, who are _you_?"

Ah. "You're probably thinking I'm one of Halaster's tricks." My voice cracked from disuse, and I cleared it in embarrassment.

His posture straightened. "How would you know what I think?"

He had me there. I stepped forward to examine him a little better and felt my tail sway in approval. He looked like he could fight, at least, from what little I could see. I sniffed, but couldn't catch anything beyond the stench of ogre. "Because it's what I think. You know, if you're not real, you're an awful elaborate lie. Halaster's certainly done madder things. E's a barmy sack of goat testicles, I hope he hears me say that. Now, out of the shadows with you." I made a shooing motion at him toward the light, just in case I misjudged him and he turned out to be a simpleton. "Come on, now! If you're real, that is. The ogres don't come over here, least they won't for a few hours. You are real, aren't ye? I've been here for awhile, and I think it's entirely possible ye aren't. I may have forgotten what people look _or_ smell like." The words came back to me in droves - it felt indescribably wonderful to have someone other than the mage to talk to.

A few moments passed in silence before the man stepped out of the shadows. He didn't remove his hood but I could see his face in full at that point – handsome in the fierce and almost uncomfortably perfect faces that only drow have, and with eyes the color of fine wine. (Oh, wine. How I've missed you, in the long dark of this dungeon . . .) Since he hadn't tried immediately to kill or antagonize me, I assumed he was some sort of renegade drow, for there was precedent, even if they were rare. Still, I glared at him under my scrutiny and while he simply stared curiously back. I was doing my best to look not look astonished, considering he was the first other adventurer I'd seen here that was alive and breathing. He had to be either extremely clever or extremely fast in order to have survived this far. Drow were notoriously tricky, and I knew from an uncomfortable personal experience that if any of 'em were born with anything deficient, they either sacrificed them to demons or chucked 'em down a pit for driders to eat. So he, he probably wasn't an idiot, and he had a more than basic understanding of tactics and traps. He'd have to, in order to have lived long enough to get to my section. His cloak was long and green and his scaled armor glinted dimly in the firelight – inexpensive and a tad unfitting, I thought, which struck me as odd because he moved with the grace of more than passing experience. His face was still young, though that was a meaningless term when applied to elves, thus I was unsure what to make of him. He could have perhaps been born into the adventuring career or maybe . . .

"Tell me who you are," I demanded.

He glared. "No, you first, fiendling." His eyes were mostly fixed on my face, but they kept wandering down. His voice was almost as soft as his shadow, with an untraceable accent. There was a harshness in his tone outside of the intentional whisper, suggesting disuse or injury as well as an understandable caution.

"That's _Miss _fiendling to you, you wanker, because I asked first." I raised my voice because I had no fear of being overheard and crossed my arms over my breasts, worried that he was having difficult concentrating for all the wrong reasons. I'd been naked for so long that I'd forgotten what clothes and armor felt like. Days were impossible to reckon in most sections because time flowed differently in every one. Undermountain was a bloody circus, and here I was, a naked clown.

It took him a moment or two to answer. "I am called Solaufein," he grumbled. His voice was commandingly quiet, with more rasp than tone and gave my body an involuntary shiver. The name definitely sounded drow, and his accent wasn't thick but it was telling, and he didn't mention a House name. Most drow loved bragging about their prestige, but this one seemed to be suspicious. That worked well for my idiom, since I'd been dealing with people finding me suspicious my entire life for reasons that weren't my fault. In this instance, me naked in a crazy dungeon with a collar on, it was probably the correct feeling to have.

I nodded and bowed with a certain degree of sarcasm. "I am called Binne. Pleasure to meet you, Solaufein. I'm, quite obviously, a captive in these parts. Mind telling me what you're doing down here?"

He glanced around and shuffled restlessly. "What does anyone do in Undermountain?" Dodging the question, but fine. "More importantly, what is a demon doing captured here?"

Oh, so that was going to be a thing. He must've been stuck on my horns and the tail. I felt it twitch erratically in response to my irritation. "Far be it from you to judge someone by the shape of their horns or ears," I smarted, "but I speak ogreish, and these stupid, _stupid_ ogres thought that was interesting." I re-thought that statement. "They're not all that stupid, not really. I just hate them. A lot. Really, I've met dumber Helmites. The mage one is remarkably intelligent. I gave him the idea that I'd be more useful alive than tasty in a pot. They said demon flesh was no good to eat, so I cook for them."

He processed this and then his face scrunched in disbelief. "You are the ogre's cooking rothe?"

I sighed. "Well, I used to be a stable-hand, but it's been hard to find work in Undermountain these days. Much as I appreciate the conversation - really, I'm tearin' up in relief as only one of the ogres is anything other than unpleasant to talk to, but he's still the worst conversationalist - can we skip to the part where you free me?" I scratched at my collar.

"Possibly," he offered vaguely and then stepped a bit closer, cloak swishing. I found myself unconsciously taking a step back, and felt irritated at. I was powerless without my collar, and hadn't exactly had much to eat during my imprisonment. I had no way of knowing how much weight I'd lost, and no mirrors to see my appearance. I'd spent most of my time in captivity cathartically cursing the gods. "Tell me how you got down here, first," he demanded. At least his eyes were fixated on my face. Drow had a certain reputation, the males in particular. I realized that I'd been worried for the last few seconds he was simply going to kill me, and felt a little embarrassed of my anxiety. Without my power, I felt completely useless. I was stronger and durable than most elves or humans on account of my demonic heritage, but I was no ogre. He had done nothing threatening so far and only seemed curious, so that put me a little at ease.

"Durnan opened up the Well for me after I presented him with an official writ when the Lords first sealed it, when beholders started popping up out of the shadows and eye-blasting street walkers," I muttered dryly. "Tch, no bloody other way to get down here that I know of." I looked up at Solaufein rather desperately as an idea came to me. But first, I had to get some information. "I've been down here . . . Oh I don't know how long. Maybe a few days. Or a year. Or a month. What's happened to Waterdeep? Undermountain is restless."

"Why do you care?" He wondered, honestly. His face scrunched then in thought, or distaste. "I am not convinced that this is not an elaborate hoax of the mad mage's design."

I frowned. I didn't know how much I wanted to tell this drow about myself or background, but considering I was a collared slave to ogres unless he decided to help me, I felt it best to simply put my cards on the table. If sincerity didn't convince him, nothing would. I hesitated on account of the ironic notion that I, a six foot cambion, was hoping to win over a drow with my sincerity.

I cleared my throat. "Uhm. Ahem. Well, for a bit of completely _not _suspicious context, I found meself in the Archmage's Academy once as a child where one of my appearance might have blended in - or at least drawn less notice to herself. Where else do the magically gifted children of adventurers' go? Elsewhere I face stones thrown and one time, an actual mob! True story," and I trailed off a little as I recalled fondly that Zhentarim imprisonment solely for the revenge I'd acquired after escaping it. "My teachers there only cared for my abilities, not my . . . Father's traits." I gestured down at my nudity, which I'd grown accustomed to after a month because the ogres thought it was funny to not give me clothes and were ripe bastards. There was a nearby lava flow, so the place was hardly cold, and I'd honestly just gotten used to it. I'd been thoroughly divested of all my earthly possessions, even my earrings, when the ogre mage had slapped the torc on me. There would be no way of hiding what I was - and for a moment I praised Tymora in my heart for the luck that it was a drow who had crossed my path, and not some blade-happy adventurer. At least they weren't likely to kill a demon spawn if they found a creative use for them. I'd rather be violated than dead.

I flicked my tail to grab his eye's attention when I felt them lingering away from my eyes again, and felt a bit of nervousness well up in my gut. "My family owns a ranch in around Neverwinter," I went on after my hesitation. "Oi, don't look so surprised. That's where I was born and that's where me da and ma live, and where I'd much like to go back to! But I'm stuck here until the Blackcloak is found! He's been missing, place is a bloody steaming uproar of goblinshite! You can go back up and ask Durnan if he remembers me. Tell 'im Binne sent'cha, the big gal with the horns. I bet 'is wife would remember me too, wench threw me out of the bloody Inn when I walked in. Ugh! Paladins! I was, no, no sent isn't the right word. Coerced. I was coerced into it." I shrugged. "That would be a more accurate way of describing what happened to me - I was to find out why Halaster had seemingly disappeared from Undermountain. He's been silent and un-scryable. I've been here for so long that I've forgotten what grass smells like. So, has Waterdeep gotten itself knocked over in my absence? Last I knew, the grigs and eye-tyrants were hassling locals, and it got everyone a bit miffy."

Solaufein's hood shifted down as he glanced from side to side, revealing scarred and silver-studded ears, and a carelessly tumbled shaven central stripe of short, shock-white hair. It was refreshingly normal, unlike all those elves I'd seen with the long, pristine, pretty braids that went to the floor. "There have been dhaerow raiding parties raiding the surface for a few months now, and assassinations of key figures all around the city. It is a siege from the shadows," he explained.

"Well aren't you dramatic. Are you with them?" I wondered. I didn't have a problem with it if he was - if it came between my own life and Waterdeep, I'd pick myself - but I'd already pegged him as an outcast based off of his manner and appearance, as well as the fact that he was addressing me as an equal. Dark elf males were subservient toward females of their kind to a sharp point, but only when they followed their weird demon-spider goddess' precepts. They held no such deference at all toward females of other races. I'd seen as much the one time I'd been mistakenly summoned there by a whip-happy priestess to oversee a drowish christening. It featured in my nightmares sometimes. And it's not my fault my arcane name sounds similar to a lot of others! Solaufein didn't address me with disrespect, but refreshingly possessed none of the deference of a male dark elf conditioned by his society. His spine was too straight; though his eyes were the ride shade of wine-red-wary when they graced my form. There was more suspicion than admiration, which I respected. I wasn't in any position to seduce someone. I would come across as too desperate. "You don't strike me as a spider-kisser," I admitted honestly, "but one cannot be certain. I could care less if you are or aren't, because frankly, in my position as I am I have very little use for the gods or morality. I'll take what's given to me, at this point. If you are an elaborate trap, I'd prefer if you just told me now or killed me and be done with it. I've had enough of this awful dungeon either way."

Something in his posture relaxed, and I felt a little more at ease in reflex. I suspected he might be faster than I, and it pleased me to see he was not quick to draw his blades. Too many in his position were, and had somehow lost sight of the value of solving one's problems nonviolently. I felt my tail twitch in excitement at the thrill I felt of feeling hope, and grabbed it in one hand to keep it still. "No. I . . ." He seemed to hesitate. "I follow my own goddess. Eilistraee. She is why I am here."

He fingered a medallion beneath his undershirt and pulled it out to show me. I'd never seen her sigil, but it didn't look like anything like the Spider Queen's so I nodded brusquely as if I knew exactly what we were talking about. I had to ruin the image with my big mouth. "Oh right. The, er, elvish one. Is she, er, the song one? Or the . . . Tall one, with the arrows? Or the, er, pretty rainbow one? Eh." I trailed off and bore his stare, that fell on me like an intelligence drain. I gave up. "Look mate, much like infernal contracts, I think what happens between men and their dark secrets is their own bloody business." I changed the subject because gods were always an uncomfortable subject. "So, other drow have been raiding? _Up_ from Undermountain? I had heard there might be a way to the Underdark in the lowest levels, but I thought it was just a juicy rumor. I knew Halaster was mad, but I didn't think he was stupid. Who builds an entrance to the Underdark in their death dungeon? That'd just. That would just be crazy." I tried hard not to laugh at my own joke, and only let out a snort.

He gave me a weird look, apparently unamused. "That is almost word-for-word what a halfling I met earlier today said. Now I am not so sure you are real." I guffawed at this, but the suspicion he'd held earlier had gone. "They are likely from here, or a nearby entrance. I have encountered a few parties, so I suspect they have taken over the dungeon. I've seen many duergar too, and b'halach. The attacks have been going on for several weeks. You've been down here for over a month? With the ogres?" He seemed stuck on this as much as his eyes seemed to be stuck on the horns, or my breasts. He caught himself staring at my tail in my hand a few times during our conversation, but I paid it no mind. "Naked?" He added with a hint of amusement.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Well, I don't know how long I've been here! Time here is - is - is runny!"

"Runny?" He tasted the word uncomprehendingly.

"It runs funny!" I struggled to convey the concept that I'd only ever felt, and never described. The passive swell of time and memory in Undermountain was likely more mental than literal, but one could never be too sure in a mad wizard's death dungeon. "Like a - a viscous soup. It doesn't always flow right way, or as fast as it does in other places. You'll see! And yes, I have lived with the ogres. The fey all tried to gut me so they could eat me. As long as I cook and clean the ogres are civil to me and keep their grubby hands off. It's not my fault they took my armor as a, a, a sick joke!"

He apparently couldn't get past this idea. "With _these_ ogres? The ones I have been killing all morning?"

"You've been killing them?" I clapped in delight like a giddy child, Sune help me. "Ohohoho! How many?"

He shifted from foot to foot and paced to the other side of the small room, clearly uncomfortable about confined spaces. Strange for one whose native environment was the Underdark, but maybe he was one of the rare surface drow. And had he really come down into Undermountain _alone__?_ Who was this guy? "Xa. They have begun a war with the fae down here, so I have slain many. Why are you down here? Did you come alone? You said you were coerced."

I held up my hand and whistled. "That's a lot of questions. Suffice to say I'm not dead is because I happen to be good at lying, and the reason I'm alive is because I know how to cook some mean Halfling for ogre dinner. You know, for the baby ogres."

Solaufein stopped his impatient pacing and stared at me with unreadable eyes. "Oh. That was not a joke?"

I glared at him again and pointed at my serious face. "I cook the adventurers that these ogres kill. I know a smattering of ogreish, most beast-tongues, abyssal . . . And _some _gnollish. And I'm not proud of it, because my accent is atrocious." I sighed. "Beast tongues aren't so hard, fairly simple. It's the sylvan - that one is tricky. _Very _specific pronunciations, lots of words that sound the same, don't get me started on the adverbs - never thought knowing that shite would be useful at any point in my life, but wouldn't you know it, it's saved me more than once!"

"What? You talk too much." Solaufein glanced off to the side and then dashed out the doorway to peer down the hall, maybe to see if there were any ogres overhearing us.

"You're the one who asked," I grumbled, I followed him. I hadn't talked to a person that wasn't a fucking ogre in over two weeks, and just now realized I'd been rambling. The drow paused for a moment, listening, and I leaned in, breathing in the earthy scent and glanced over his shoulder. He even smelled like the surface, which was wonderful. He brushed me off, startled, and I merely stared at him like he was an idiot, and felt my tail whip back in irritation against the stones in the wall. It didn't occur to me until a few seconds later that it probably was weird that I'd just up and crept up and sniffed him.

"Er, sorry," I offered unapologetically. "I haven't seen anyone except harpies and ogres." He gave me that weird, unamused look again. "You know, it won't be dinner time for some time. They won't come down here, and they have terrible hearing. They think I smell funny. At least, they won't come unless someone has a spontaneous baby or something. Uh, Cyric, I hope that doesn't happen, I might be forced to kill meself." He gave me a funny look. "I'm, uh, also the resident midwife."

The drow grimaced and then softened into a thoughtful expression. "There are female ogres? I mean, I know that there must be, but . . . I do not think I have ever seen one." A look of curiosity followed by disgust crossed his face again.

I had followed his train of thought. "You don't ever think about it, I know, but the females look very similar to the males. Some of them even have magnificent beards, too. Like dwarves. They don't sound all too different from the males either. Or smell different. The only real difference between the two ogre genders is that one of them have dangly bits that the other don't!"

The drow decided on one final expression, and appeared horrified at the thought of ogre dangly bits. "Rul'selozan," he decided in a disgusted voice, and peered back down the hallway. I thought back to the various escape routes that I'd come up with in my mind and decided there was never a better time than now to tell him my idea. I wasn't going to be stuck in Undermountain for another second alone with these monsters, not if I could help it. I'd been waiting for someone to come down this way for some time, and I wasn't about to pass the opportunity up. The promising elf was certainly my ticket out of there. Maybe I'd have to start worshiping Tymora, if I thanked her too much . . .?

And speaking of the drow, he was just about to open his mouth and say something but I cut him off. "Ssh! I've been waiting for another live one for a long time, and I'm not about to waste this moment. I've a plan. I canna do it alone, though. I need your help, please say yes."

He stared at me and folded his arms grumpily. "I know you not, and I am not so foolish as to release a demon from their contract."

"You know more about me than I do about you!" I cried, throwing my arms up in the air. "You know I speak ogreish. Most people don't know that! Of course, I kind of just threw that out there, but, you know!" I grasped at straws. "Must you judge a woman by the shape of her horns? Surely you have faced worse from surfacers in your time above."

He frowned and drew his hood back up about his face. "You are no mere demon spawn, that much I can tell," he admitted. "But it is not because of your heritage that I say thus. Undermountain is full of attractive lies. You may lead me into a trap."

I guffawed at the implication and the notion that I was at all attractive in that moment. "Oh, spare me. You know you want to kill all those ogres. They're an affront to decent sensibilities! Their stench is heinous and I've a quick way to be rid of them. All you have to do is help get me the _damn hells_ out of this hole."

His posture and his gaze didn't waver an inch. "You said before that you were summoned, and now you try to dodge the subject."

I groaned and leaned against the corridor wall. "Really? You really want to get into that? It's a long story."

"I think I have the time." Half of a wry smile played at his lips. "After all, they're not due til dinnertime, and time is _runny__._"

"Bah. Halaster is missing, you know." I breathed in deep and spoke fast. "I was, _am_ a warlock – former apprentice of Blackstaff, the arch-mage of Waterdeep, and it's isn't as uncommon as ye'd assume even for us horned types. It was the one place in Faerûn I barely stuck out. When I graduated, I left the city and wandered. Made a bit of a name for meself after killing a lot of Zhents maybe - kind of - by accidentally on purpose. And for killing a lich so I could have his jewelry at some point or another. I liked to think I made me ma proud - but we was all estranged then. So, I eventually made my way back up the Sword Coast, hit Neverwinter, reconciled the family, got stuck in the city during that plague business and helped out with the war effort against Luskan, then got a summons . . . about a month before I went down here, I was summoned by one of my old teachers when I'd opened his letter. First I thought it was a prank. Then he said that the Council was concerned about Halaster, and as it turns out Blackstaff had had been keeping tabs on the Blackcloak to make sure he didn't do anything completely insane here in his death-dungeon. Ha-ha-how I laughed! Then ol Khelby said the mad bastard had disappeared off the face of the map, they couldn't find him through any form of divination, and they were basically throwing any able bodied person they could at the problem until it got solved, and all sorts of baddies from Undermountain were crawling over the city too fast and in numbers too severe for the guard alone to handle. I had nothing better to do, so I 'offered' my investigative prowess. Hired two idiots to escort me, though I thought I'd be fine on my own without a large group to bog me down, but here I am." I paused, took another deep breath.

Solaufein said nothing, so I decided to add, "It, uh, didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Hoped I'd quit halfway through out of impatience and blow up the whole dungeon in a fit of pique, as I'm wont to do, but then me spell backfired! Thought I'd be doing' a public service, yeah? This place is a damned tourist trap, and a hazard. Hundreds die in here every year! Now, Halaster's definitely dead. Maybe I would've really gotten somewhere if it hadn't been for those damn cats on the second level. Hadn't expected 'em. Outsiders always seem to hate me. And that's the short version of my long, sordid tale, so now can we get down to business please?"

He took some time to respond. "Halaster disappeared months ago? Are you certain of this?"

I snorted at that. I was tired of this conversation already. I knew I'd have to repeat this information to whomever was running the show upstairs and that just made it worse. "That's what they told me. I just assumed 'yes,' because it made a sort of sense to me. Why else would any of this be happening? Unless Halaster himself is behind it all. It stinks of a well-laid plan, or a mad wizard's whimsy. Not sure there's much of a difference since the end result is the same. It'd be a great sort of irony if he just went on vacation during all this."

Solaufein turned away and started pacing again. I, for once, kept my big mouth shut and decided to just let him think. "I was sent here by Durnan on behalf of the Lords of Waterdeep to find Halaster, and figure out how to stop the dhaerow attacks. They are not going to be pleased if he's dead. There have been many assassinations on the surface, and thefts of magical artifacts on top of the many raiding parties. Waterdeep is being evacuated. You say you made it to the second level?" He perked up at this thought.

I thought, aha, a way I could be useful. "Yes," I started slow, "since Halaster is gone, the place hasn't changed and the puzzles are still the same. You could almost make a map of this place. Know it like the back of me hand." I stared down at my hand and noticed my claws had grown a little out of control. I twitched self-consciously, and wished a pox upon the ogre mage for stealing _even my damned nail file_. "I know where some decent treasure is, mind you," I added after a pause.

"I am still experiencing difficulty believing that you have been down here, naked, playing midwife and cook to ogres for a month," he said abruptly, shaking his cloaked head in disbelief. "I cannot decide between amusement or pity about your predicament."

"I'm a warlock," I hissed violently, because this was indeed a touchy subject for me and I hated being pitied, "and I can't summon _anything _or use my magic until this…this…THING," I yanked and pulled at my metal collar on my neck, which had been endowed with all number of dispelling magic runes and anti-magic spells – the ogre mage's work when they dragged me down here, "is off my neck. Ow!" I'd accidentally scratched myself with one of my own black claws, and pouted. "Why'd I do that? Ah, so, yes, at least I know a lot about this place, considering the time I've spent down here, so freeing me is definitely in your best interest."

Solaufein, the evil, _evil drow_, smirked. Fuck Tymora right in the ear. He unfolded his arms and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. "What is the price of freeing you?"

"Not a price, it's the ogre mage. I can get you to him, and then you can just kill him or convince him to take this bloody thing off—" I yanked violently at the iron collar again, wincing. "I will literally do anything for you if you help me out of here."

"Why would I need you?" he seemed genuinely confused.

"Because I'll do anything, _anything!_ I'll cook for you if you want. I make a mean gnome stew! I-I know how to distill alcohol. I'll shine your shoes, polish your sword, help you through this dungeon, take you to all the treasure I know of, darn your bloody socks, fight your enemies, loan you all the magic I have, I'll—"

The drow warrior held up his hands, eyes widening. "Fi—"

"Raise you an army of demons and the eternal undead, just please, please, _please_ get me out of here!" You know what, after you spend a month being a slave to a bunch of dirty, filthy ogres, you'll lose part of your dignity too. So I'm fairly unashamed to admit that I got down on my hands and knees, grabbed Solaufein's cloak to bury my face in and hugged his leg as I begged for his help with tears in my eyes. "PLEASE. Get me out of here! I can't stand this—awful—horrible place anymore!" I might have sniffled a bit and intentionally pushed my breasts on his legs. The tears were real from being emotionally overwhelmed at talking to a whole person after so long along, plus I'm an emotional sort of buffoon, but I'd ham it up if it got me his help faster.

Solaufein carefully extricated himself from my grasp and gently pushed me away. I clasped my hands together and gave the best innocent, helpless look I could muster, which must've looked terrible. I had black horns the size of a goat's that curved around my damn head, sharp black claws instead of nails, dusky red skin, a spiny black tail, and eyes the unnatural shade of flames. Somehow it must've miraculously worked, because he pleaded, "please get off of me. You mentioned a plan?"

Oh, Tymora, I knew you were looking out for me! There were only two forces in Undermountain who had to power to remove my anti-magic collar – the ogre mage just a tick to the north, and the Fairy Queen all the way in the south dungeon. The Fae were totally out of the question, so of course I had to get the ogre mage to do it for me. The Fairy Queen would just blast us to the next life for even glancing at her funny. Although Solaufein wasn't terrible on the eyes - might be she could take a fancy to him. Or try to eat him. I didn't want to chance my only ticket out of here, though. At least the ogre mage was a somewhat reasonable sort. Sad, innit? I knew he was too clever to trick into it, but with my new drow friend, I had an ace card. The key to my collar was in a pouch on the ogre mage's left side – I'd watched him very intently as he put it in there when he captured me – and after I got that, then I could safely go about my way of brutally killing every ogre in the main hall.

The plan? It was a lot simpler than you'd think it was. The element of surprise was on our side, and though I knew for a fact that the ogres wouldn't smell the drow over my own, but just to be sure I had him roll around in some spices left about.

Although it turned out that Solaufein wasn't alone. He had a pet kobold named Deekin who was surprisingly talkative. And a bard who was a proficient spell caster, and turned out to be smartest person I'd ever met. I was coping on the inside. I would've been surprised, but my life had always been a joke so it made a sick kind of sense. I didn't judge people by their pets, though. It worked out for the best, because having a spell-caster made the plan much smoother.

Soon was time for ogre dinner. I'd "cooked" something, more or less just heated some random things and made it smell good and was on my way to take it to the ogres. Solaufein was watching closely from the shadows – he was good, I could only see him because I was looking for him. ogres aren't observant creatures to begin with, the mage being the exception, so they wouldn't see him coming. It wouldn't really matter anyway after I got my hands on that key to my collar – they'd all be dead, dead, dead. Elminster's poxy bawbags, but my blood raced at the thought of it. Sweet, sweet revenge was soon to be mine.

I braced myself for the coming stench – and there it was, as soon as I entered the main hall of the north section of Undermountain. Unwashed, rotting flesh and everything else that comes to mind when you say the word 'ogre.' It was horrible. Most of them started growling the instant I walked in, pushing that humongous covered platter. (The ogre mage had an odd sense of humor and liked his meals 'civilized' on plates and with utensils on such. Fancied himself a gentleman) The ogre mage at the head of the hall silenced them. He was just sitting there, idly reading a book of history, which looked quite comical in his large hands. He licked his finger to turn the page when he saw me.

I cleared my throat. "Here's the grub, master," I greeted cheerfully in ogreish, terrible accent aside. The ogre mage barely looked up and then motioned me forward. My pulse started racing. I didn't dare look off to the side or behind me to find Solaufein, that would give the game away. I just carefully and calmly walked forward. There was a brief whimper I thought I heard from the platter in front of me. I felt bad for the summoned wolf of Deekin's, it was probably squished and uncomfortable. Dire wolves aren't exactly small, you know.

The ogre mage put down his book when I was in front of him. He looked at the "dinner" suspiciously, and then said in perfect (slightly accented) Common, "what's it this time, witch?" (he'd never bothered to learn my name) "More adventurers coming down?" He sighed plaintively. "You'd think they'd learn, but no, they just keep coming. And now with these dark elves causing all this ruckus, there's just going to be more."

I shrugged and nodded. "Sure, why not?"

He turned his suspicious gaze from the platter to me. "You seem very tense, young one."

I was thirty two, but apparently that didn't count for much in ogre years. "No, just very tired." I switched back to Common. Ogreish was a bit harsh on the throat and water was hard to come by in a dungeon. "Enjoy the fruits of my labor," I gestured at the 'dinner.'

He stuck his gnarled face up in the air and started sniffing. I acted perfectly natural despite the fact that I was screaming inside. Stupid ogre. You don't smell anything. Shut up and eat your food, ye smelly fiend!

And sure enough, after a short while the ogre mage nodded and I slowly turned to walk away just as he opened the dish.

All I heard was a growling and a cry of pain. I whipped around and saw the dire wolf, almost slowed from a Time Stop it seemed to me, launching itself at the ogre mage, snarling like it was rabid. The ogre mage gasped and the whole room was transformed into chaos. I heard the kobold bard from the hall and a distance start clanging cymbals together in a distracting song, before it went silent and flaming crossbow bolts started making their way into ogres' arms and necks from the periphery.

"Useful little bugger," I admitted with admiration.

Solaufein had been wearing an invisibility spell, and dispelled it as he leapt out of the shadows without a sound and struck an ogre in the belly. I was impressed. The ogres started howling. There were maybe ten or fifteen of them, I hadn't counted, but I was sure the warrior had. I kicked the platter aside, sending it crashing into the knees of the nearest ogre, who started to hop up and down on one leg, clutching the other one and yelping in pain. I picked it up from my feat and beat him over the head with it twice, not that it did much but annoy the ogre. So, I kicked him in the dangly bits with my bare, clawed foot, and it came back bloody. The nasty ogre fell over and howled in agony.

I would've laughed if I had the time, but I didn't so I ran towards the ogre mage, my toe-claws (they were the _worst_ to file down) scratching harshly against the unlettered stone floor. I didn't feel it since they were tougher than the rock, but it sent a shiver up my spine unpleasantly at the sensation.

As an aside, I always thought it funny that this particular ogre insisted his brethren keep their living space clean despite never washing themselves. It was revolting in an ironic sort of way. I digress.

Deekin's little surprise wasted no time and launched itself at the ogre mage's leg, who didn't dodge fast enough and was busy casting a spell in his head. Distracted, he howled when he realized what the wolf was aiming for and the pouch with my blessed, blessed key snapped off. The wolf shook it in its mouth and then cast it aside, towards me, attention never diverting from the mage. I have never been more in love with an animal in my life, nor would I ever be since, because that is not the sort of thing you admit to in front of sober company.

I jumped and shouted in pure glee while the ogre mage cast me baleful glances. I was so happy I could barely hear the sounds of swords clashing and armor clinking and intense growling from where Solaufein was busy dodging and attacking the remaining ogres in the room. I caught him out of the corner of my eye pulling out a dirk with his right hand and attacking with two weapons, keeping his bastard sword in his left. He wielded the sword with surprising strength for an elf and cleaved one of the ogre's heads clean in two with it, and reversed his swing in a moment to cleave a second one halfway through the neck, and still dodge the blow from a third as he ripped it out and black blood poured forth like a revolting fountain. He was _quite _useful indeed.

I fiddled with the pouch in frustration – I was too excited to even get it open. "Binne!" An angry shout came from the drow. I growled a bit and finally got the key out. I heard a loud whimper from the dire wolf and saw out of the corner of my eye the ogre mage kick the beast away. A loud howling started to fill the room, from the ogres or the wolf, I couldn't tell. I tried to fit the key into the lock, but couldn't see what I was doing and kept fumbling.

"Auril's frozen cunt," I cursed and shoved the key into the lock in of the collar that had permanently scarred my neck, bending as I twisted it. "I hate ogres, hate ogres, hate ogres…"

And then it just fell off, like magic right into my fingers in two. The torc glinted for a moment with blue light, and then grew dim like normal steel. It was glorious. All the reserves of energy I had swam in my body, in my mind, filling me to the brim. I was full to burst out of my skin and I grinned. And then I laughed. And I laughed harder.

I cackled, feeling the entropic energy coursing through me once more. I had felt very alone and barren without it – the gift of a warlock is more innate than studied, even it was an unnaturally acquired ability. My was innate as far as I knew, or a pact had been made on my behalf in the womb, for I did not recall ever making one. I had to study to learn to shape my power, hone it like a weapon and make it sing and soar. I was not like the ogre mage who had to rely on memorized spells. My power was not structured and sourced from the Weave; I drew upon shadow, chaos, and decay. A warlock is anti-thetical to the the Spellweave, like the needle that threaded through it but could be no part of it.

The chanting in the room briefly stopped as my cackle echoed about in a cacophony of noise combined with all the other ogre's and the dire wolf's howling. But I couldn't stop laughing, laughing out of joy. I experienced happiness for the first time in a long, long wait. I felt tears pouring down my cheeks in relief, so overwhelmed with feeling I was. It was as if the suffering had gone by in a blink and I was on vacation from myself - only to just then have returned. It felt like coming home. I wept and laughed simultaneously like a child, unable to contain either my sorrow or joy as half of me that was missing returned, making me whole again.

The ogre mage had erected several magical barriers around him and was now standing between me and the briefly downed dire wolf with a mixture of disappointment and apprehension. I glared through my tears and wiped at my eyes. I felt a disturbance at my back and saw the corner of Solaufein's forest-colored cloak out of the corner of my eye, as his back brushed up against mine. The remaining ogre clan started to surround us, snarling, gnashing. Through my glare, I grinned, though from me it was more of a smirk. I could never smile and light up a room with friendliness; my canines were too sharp.

I cast the first thing that came to my desperate fingertips purely fueled by emotion, which let loose brands of hellfire snaking their way out from my hands towards the ogres and the ogre mage. The fire dissipated on his magical barrier but it at least made him flinch. The other ogres didn't stand a chance and I watch them as the snakes of fire ate and wrapped their way through flesh and bone and incinerated all that it touched, all the while humming happily to myself as I felt the very magic of Undermountain, combined with my own, humming its own little happy harmonious tune. Magic did strange things in Undermountain – it either did the exact opposite of what you wanted it to do, it worked twice as effectively, or it blew up in your face. I suppose I was lucky, having only experienced the failure once.

As soon as the spell was done, only two ogres were left standing. The ogre mage's barrier had protected him, but his stoneskin was gone. The other two looked between each other and seemed confused. I sighed happily and looked at my newest friend askance. Solaufein's expression was, as I was starting to understand typically unreadable, but I thought I saw his teeth flash from a brief smile. "It's so good to be back," I sighed again happily, and rubbed the remaining tears from my eyes.

A wolf's howl brought us back to the battle. "Yaith ptau'al, a'temra," Solaufein murmured and launched himself at the ogre mage, sword glinting in his hand.

I don't think he realized I couldn't understand him. I only knew how to curse in drow. "Dosst ilhar uriu vith xuil rothe!" I shouted after him the only thing I knew how to say in his language. I turned my attention to the two ogres I'd left standing.

They were injured and burnt, but only partially. "You're dead," I declared, pointing. I tapped into the well within me and pulled up another spell. It grew in my closed palm like a tight coil of entropic energy, and with a grunt and a thrust, I pulled back and tossed the javelin of my rage right at them. It shined like a little beam of sunlight and split into two mid-flight and pierced them deep, and I swore I could briefly see their little stinky, ornery little ogre souls leaving their bodies. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and rubbed my neck where the collar had once been. Yes, it was definitely good to be back. I felt alive, and more cheerful and more like me than I had been since even before Undermountain. Before now, I'd just been drifting through a fog. It felt like the sun was shining on me, even though I must have been a league or so under the earth.

The ogre mage really hadn't stood a chance. The combination of Solaufein and the wolf was too much for the bastard and his magic barrier had finally fallen. The warrior slashed, dodged, and kicked, almost too fast for me to see, under the ogre's own sword and spells, and then with one final move which I can only accurately call a whirlwind of swordplay to hit the barrier successively until it exhausted itself, and the ogre mage fell to his knees in surrender immediately after. His hood had fallen back in the battle a while and it struck me that Solaufein wasn't wearing a helmet. Parts of his warrior-stripe were now dark with the blood that had sprayed across him in the fight. He made a frightening and intriguing image, with the ogre mage at his bloodied sword's point.

The ogre started chuckling. I felt insulted. "All right," gave up the ogre mage. He addressed the drow who was only panting slightly. The ogre wiped blood from his face that was streaming from a bite wound that the dire wolf had inflicted. "I surrender. A fine battle, little one. And you, witch," he tacked on in after-thought, looking over at me briefly. I expected something else, I don't know what, but what was there was a mix of amusement and something else. I wasn't good at reading ogre's faces, which can be attributed to the fact that most of their faces are too hideously mangled by their own unfortunate genetics to read. "A good ruse. I knew you'd have the guts to try and escape eventually. Of course, I didn't count on you succeeding, but still."

"We're hardly little, ogre," I told him in ogreish. "Or young. All the same, I'm rather glad I succeeded."

"Oh, so would I be, in your position." He looked back to Solaufein who had stayed his blades, but clenched the hilts. The wolf panted and sat at his feet. I looked around, wondering where the kobold had disappeared to. "You've defeated me in quite a cavalier—"

Solaufein suddenly cut him off, turning to me, and held up an arm to quiet the surprised ogre. "A moment." He addressed me in a low voice. "Did you just tell me my mother fucks _rothe__?_"

I thought about that question for a good second. I had to phrase this delicately . . . "If I say yes, will you be mad?"

He stared at me. The only part of his expression that changed was a twitch of the lip. "Is that - _all_ \- you know how to say in my language?"

I brushed a piece of hair behind my ear and twirled it; an old nervous tick that lost me many a game. ". . . If I say yes, will you be mad?"

His straight face cracked and he started laughing. It started off as a rasp, and then erupted into a full throated and deep laugh that had him bent over nearly in tears. I couldn't help but laugh along with and feel a bit foolish about being nervous. It was actually a rather nice way to end the battle, honestly, and felt like a much needed release. Our ogre captive who had no idea what was going on seemed caught up in the jolly mood for a good while until we both noticed him laughing along and then he appeared to get uncomfortable. This made us both laugh harder.

Eventually, the ogre decided it was his turn once we had his attention again. "I assume since you know the cambion this means you're not quite in cahoots with that blasted fairy, though since you decimated my forces it seems she now rules this level." I was going to tell him that I was likely going to go after that blasted fairy after this too, simply because I now _could__,_ but I held my tongue. "I suppose all good things must come to an end. Now, what are you planning to do with me?" He addressed the rather inappropriately relaxed Solaufein, rightfully because I'd barely known the man an hour and I already knew he was in charge.

Solaufein thought about it, shrugged, and then put his sword down. I stared at the adventurer in shock and disappointment. Where was his infamous drow killing spirit? What sort of dark elf was he, anyway! "I am not planning anything. Know anything about the others of my kind coming up?" He added the question like it was an afterthought.

The ogre mage looked puzzled and shook his head. "You are not the first one I have seen, but I know not their purpose or from whence they came. The lower levels, I assume. There's an Underdark entrance down there. I cannot say for certain, but that would be my guess. Berger would know more."

"Berger?" He repeated the sound like he mistrusted it.

"Halaster's son."

"That flesh golem?!" I was shocked, _shocked._ "You mean to say he turned his son into a flesh golem?! And people just . . . And everyone in the, they just - just let him do it? To his own son?"

The ogre mage looked confused. "No, the flesh golem is his son. He built Berger. Halaster's always treated him like a son. He's rather simple, keeps to himself. Doesn't mind any of us. I expect he'd been mutilated by the invading dark elves, but there might be a chance that he got away. Probably hiding in the lab. He rarely leaves it."

"The flesh golem," I repeated, stunned.

Solaufein sighed and tugged his hood around his ears. "I have no time for this. Leave," he commanded. The ogre mage looked a bit startled, huffed, and then stood up and hobbled his gigantic way off, blood trailing him. The three of us stared at the ogre's retreating form until he left the main hall and his faltering footsteps faded into nothing.

"Lucky bastard," I muttered into the sudden silence. "Anybody else would've killed him_. __I _wanted to kill him. Why didn't I kill him?"

"You were right," Solaufein informed me in a surprised tone. I couldn't see his eyes clearly underneath his hood but he looked a bit surprised.

I was going to say, 'I'm always right,' but that wouldn't have been true because I'm frequently wrong, so I said, "That's unusual. Wait. Right about what?"

"The plan. Though you would have removed the collar faster if not for the claws." He stared pointedly at the culprits.

I examined my fingers in despair and almost felt tears welling up again. "Fuckers stole my special claw-file."

"Please do not cry," he asked of me in an unnerved voice. "It makes me want to kill things." Solaufein put away his weapons whistled for his kobold pet while I swallowed that statement.

"Deekin?" The titular bard said, and stepped into visibility not more than twenty feet away. I jumped, a little startled and annoyed at his soundless entrance. How had a kobold gotten the drop on me? Deekin frowned back. "What Boss be thinking?" He scratched out in his reedy voice.

I shrugged. If the world, through trial and error could manage to produce more than one halfway decent drow, or one halfway intelligent kobold, then ogres could be intelligent too. Snorting, I glanced around at the room, noting the heavy number of dead ogre bodies strewn about and then headed for the mage's desk. You heard me. He had a desk, which he was entirely too large for. Preposterous! I stared at the twosome briefly before resuming my ransacking of the room. I was looking for something specific, only one thing.

I turned my attention back to the ogre's desk. In it, I found not only my weapons, but my chainmail, most of my clothing, and jewelry as well. My bloody leggings were missing. My ring was a practical thing, I'd had it since I'd completed my studies fifteen years ago and it functioned as a focusing tool. I was even more scatterbrained without it. Also, it was pretty. Aside from piercings, the only other piece of anything I cared about or wore was the necklace Brega gave me, and that was for sentimental reasons. I'm not a sentimental person, but Brega is. Was. Is. It was a simple yet elegant pendant, onyx and silver chain, large and precisely cut. Whenever I touched it, I remembered I still had family. Have. Had. I used to hear his voice, sometimes. Hadn't since the Wailing. But I looked, and looked through the desk, and for the life of me I couldn't find the nail file. I wanted to cry again.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Solaufein was still busy ransacking the chamber with his pet, so I started shoving my tunic and chainmail on, feeling weird without something guarding me Nether scrolls. My boots were uncomfortable in the extreme, however, due to the length of my toe-talons, and I had ripped a hole the toes of them as well as in my gloves when I tried to put them on, which put me in an extreme pout. I hadn't found anything to file my claws down with, so I was stuck barefoot, pantsless, and gloveless in a bloody death dungeon and somehow that was an upgrade from my previous position. Devil's luck, they call that. It's what happens when Beshaba spits on you as she walks by.

By the time I was finished, Deekin and Solaufein were finished looting and everyone was back in business. It was a good feeling, but I was still annoyed. It was also, though, the time for questions and answers. "What else do you know about Undermountain?" Solaufein asked me, for some weird reason. I was going to tell him that I'd gotten around by luck of the portals, but the kobold beat me to it.

The kobold looked up at his boss in an interestingly critical way. "Deekin thinks, um, maybe goat-lady not get out much being stuck down here with smelly ogre babies."

I felt my tail twitch, giving away my irritation. "The rakshasa caught me by surprise, is all," I muttered. "I'm hardly defenseless. But they had an anti-magic—grr! Nevermind." I sighed and shifted from side to side, neither really willing nor able to answer adequately. "I don't want to have to repeat that. Do you know the way back to the well? Take me back up to the surface and I can tell everything I know to whomsoever is still in charge. Fair?"

The drow shrugged. He glanced down to the summoned wolf, yet to be dismissed, and scratched the animal behind its ears. The tame summons panted and butted his hand with its nose when he stopped. "I suppose that is fair. I can hardly expect you to endure an interview without pants. Although Deekin somehow manages," he added and his eyes darted down and away quickly from the kobold. I followed his eyes reflexively and regretted it. To my annoyance, Solaufein laughed at me again. Although it was a good laugh - infectious. "I saw you look."

I almost growled, which only made the drow chuckle more. "I wish I hadn't! I regret it now!" I grumbled, frustrated at my predicament but had largely gotten over it thanks to Solaufein. He had a fucked up way of getting my mind off of things, but it seemed to work. Not bad for someone whose people usually try to enslave you on sight.

Where exactly we had been in the dungeon was a bit of an important question. Solaufein, for whatever reason, adamantly refused to use any of the portals. I was certain one of them would return us to the well room if we just tried a few, but he was absolutely insistent. We nearly ran into Ol' Blue before he finally admitted that we were lost. I had to talk the dragon into not using us as a snack; it helped that Deekin spoke draconic and knew a dirty joke or two to amuse the old bastard enough to leave us alone. "Sir Deekin the Dragon-Tamer" was his name, now. He'd well earned my respect with that episode.

Deekin then tried to figure it all out when Solaufein started getting snippy and looking defeated, and he led is in a bit of a circle, but it was a more familiar area. We camped out for a while with snacks until he spotted a hidden door in the dungeon walls what led to a long and dark tunnel.

"Who wants to go first into the long, dark tunnel?" I asked, not raising my hand.

Solaufein and Deekin looked between each other. Strangely, Solaufein smiled and _leapt_ in, not knowing where it would go - and then I heard the horrific sound as his shout was cut off by the sudden drop. Deekin whooped and crawled in right after him. I wasn't even sure my horns would fit, so I went horns-first and nearly gut stuck until the whole thing dropped out into a greasy slide. I screamed the entire way down, feeling glad I'd head-down because that would've been worse without trousers.

I broke my fall on a pile of already-broken mushrooms. I was lucky I didn't break a horn, because I landed more or less on my back. Solaufein and Deekin were laughing looking no worse for wear while I accidentally sat on my tail and started cursing up a storm. I resented that I'd probably - no, most certainly - flashed them in that time, but the pain in my backside blotted out all other input.

"Boss, we be giving goat lady potion? She being loud," Deekin complained.

I clutched my tail and cried. "My ar-har-harrrrrse . . ." I moaned plaintively.

"Nau, I shall do it," Solaufein decided, and approached me. He knelt down to my level and placed a gloved hand on my head, and closed his eyes.

Suddenly, the most searing, white-hot pain I'd ever felt flowed through my body. It lasted for three seconds and then abated, and all the pain was gone. I felt like I could even see and hear more clearly. My sense of smell was a bit off, because all I could smell for the time was the tickling of faint herbs and something green. It must've done something off to my senses, for me to think that green had a smell. "That hurt worse than a branding iron! Augh! What was that?!" I shouted, but calmed down immediately. "And why does everything smell green? Hey, my arse doesn't hurt anymore!" I was pleased despite the pain, and stood up to brush myself off.

Solaufein frowned and leaned back. "It has never hurt anyone before."

Something in my skin had started itching terribly. I forgot all about the pain and stood up, hoping I hadn't contracted lice after managing to avoid them in the dungeon for so long. "Let's just go," I groused. I wandered right into a fire trap, but thankfully I was pretty fireproof. It did annoy me a lot though, and made Solaufein laugh pretty hard. It was nice to see him so amused, but not as such and often by my expense.

We ended up stumbling into a turf war with harpies and ogres and just decided to hold back and kill the winner. It was, unfortunately, the harpies. They tried to pick up Deekin and steal him because he was good eats, but the harpy got speared in the gut with hellfire by my spell and they dropped him in pain and distraction. The kobold fell ten feet right on top of Solaufein, which caused me to point and laugh uncontrollably, which caused one of the grigs allied with the harpies to pull on my tail and trip me good. Solaufein managed to stand up and tried to charge at the grig only to trip over me again, and then the whole thing got pretty ridiculous after that.

Thankfully, Deekin managed to kill most of the harpies with his song. I wouldn't believe such a thing was possible if I hadn't seen it in action. The bard was a terrifying series of contradictions.

We eventually found a nice spot and sat around a fire in the northern corridor to rest a bit before heading back. There was even a water source where we could clean up a bit that fed a small garden a barmy dryad lived nearby and kept the others away from her; she was at least civil and didn't attack us once she figured out we weren't going to try anything, and let us rest near her tree. She didn't want our help getting out of Undermountain, though, because she had figured out that she was less likely to get her tree cut down by surfacers down there as she was up there. Like I said, barmy.

I was over it. I was tired, but not hungry thanks to some jerky, and very sexually frustrated, and all I wanted to do was lay down with some peace and quietly diddle. It gets lonely in Undermountain, and I'd been without a while before I descended. Amidst cursing my fate, I hadn't much else to keep me occupied since my enslavement, and it isn't as if anyone getting happily laid regularly would go to Undermountain on a potential suicide mission.

Alas, while I attempted to discreetly go about my business, Solaufein had to go and ruin everything. "You must know I can hear you," he spoke from his cross-legged watch, not even turning to look at me - I had expected he had entered his reverie, but no such luck.

"Wha!" I flustered, pulling my hand away and sat up. I was glad you couldn't see a blush on my skin. "No, I wasn't! Hush!"

He seemed confused by my response. "Why do you act ashamed?" He genuinely wondered.

"I wasn't!" It wasn't shame, it was just . . .

"Are you embarrassed?" Why were his questions always so pointed?

I grumbled a bit. "Well, no, I suppose not. Just thought you were sleeping and then you just broke this long silence. And it's a bit of a mood kill. I'll, um. Finish later, somewhere well out of earshot. Don't mind me." I coughed. "Just spent months in a dungeon with nothing to keep me company or occupy me time but things I'd rather not think about at this moment. Er. Not that ogres kept me company."

He seemed amused, or surprised with his eyebrow raise. A little hard to read, Solaufein. "Surely they tried something. They are ogres."

I scoffed in mock offense. "Rather prejudiced of you, all things considering! But no, they thought I looked funnier in the nude and thought I was thoroughly hideous and smelled terrible. Not like I had regular baths available! Ogres are particular toward their kind. I looked about as appetizing to them as I'm sure I do to Deekin."

His brows pinched in consideration. "You could stand to gain some weight, but you are not unappetizing," he compliment, and it struck me as a very strange back-handed way to compliment someone.

I didn't think he had intended to insult me, though, so I just took it. "Thank you. Hard to find a lot to eat besides grigs, but I managed."

There was a bit of another silence that I wasn't sure was awkward or wasn't. I was still a bit flustered, Deekin was still lightly snoring, and Solaufein was impenetrable. "If you are unable to finish, I could help you," he suddenly offered.

That caught me very off-guard. "What? I mean . . . _What?_ You . . ." What in hells was he saying? "You — want to help me masturbate?"

He frowned and adjusted his posture so he was facing me better. "Well, maybe not when you put it like that."

"How would you put it, then?"

"Where would you like me to?" Solaufein shot back, and I couldn't help my laughter.

"I'll give you that one, I set meself up," I let out in-between chuckles. He was smirking. "But really, how do you mean?"

His expression grew a little more serious. "We are both warriors of a kind, and have not shared the bed of another for some time."

I sighed. This poor man. It was probably because most surfacers were all spooked by drow. It was the same sort of problem I had. "It's been well over that for me."

He was very matter of fact when he added, "I know that you hold back an attraction to me; I will not hold mine back from you. It would only be natural for us to use the other to sate our sexual desires."

Solaufein was definitely a strange elf. Not a bad one, but strange. I was considering the offer now. "To be fair, you're the first male I've seen in a long time and you're rather uncommonly pretty. S'only natural for me to entertain a fantasy or two, but I'm not looking to complicate things." The very last thing I needed was one of those tumultuous regular relationships like most people seemed to have.

His expression didn't change at all as he went on. "It would not be complicated unless you made it so. I have a room at the Yawning Portal they have set aside for me, if you desire privacy. My offer will remain open."

I didn't really know what to think of him at all. He kept throwing me for loops. "I'll think on it," I promised, and then said I wanted to get more shut-eye. We didn't speak again of it when we woke next, but we were already on the move to get to the Portal room and restock on supplies.

It was a surprisingly short trip thanks to the dryad's directions. Halaster didn't allow any teleporting in his dungeon and as some kind of sick joke of his, put up random portals of teleportation throughout the dungeon. You never knew where they would take you but eventually, if you went through enough of them, you'd get to where you wanted. Such was the case when we found one and eventually managed to make our way towards the beginning of the first level. Past the color-bridge and down the endless hallways we went until finally, at last, I caught sight of the most wonderful thing I might've ever seen – the well to the surface. Talos' titties, was it relieving. After Deekin banished his pet, we began the long and slow trip back to the surface, to the well-room of the Yawning Portal, and I started muttering quick prayers to all the deities I could think of that I might've angered for cursing so long and often while I was imprisoned. It was a long, long way to the top, so it's a good thing it was a long list.

The well-room was as unspectacular as I remembered it, but it was peppered now with the odd drow and surfacer corpse, which was new in the way of decoration. Durnan was pacing about the area in a frustrated way, at least I think it was Durnan because I didn't have much interaction with the man from before. At the other end of the room, standing next to an abundance of assorted gear and scrolls stood a beautiful blonde whom I knew at a glance to be a priestess of Sune Firehair – not because I was excellent at determining these things, but because of the huge symbol that graced the top of her cleavage. Besides, all priests of Sune are attractive; it's one of the stipulations of their insipid, narcissistic religion. I was scowling at her without really knowing why. Sunites had always irritated me, probably because they didn't seem to like me. I'd learned to stick to Ilmateri and Tymorans thanks to the likes of them; one Sunite had refused me service even though I'd taken an obvious beating. The Ilmateri across the street didn't hesitate.

In addition there were two other adventurers in the room that I thought I recognized, maybe – a red-headed woman in leather armor and a burly half-orc with a nasty double-bladed axe – but I didn't pay them much mind.

What I did pay mind to, all in all, was the goblin with a child's broom that began squealing and pointing at Solaufein, jumping up and down. The situation got even weirder when the goblin ran behind the warrior and grabbed his boot and cloak and cowered from the approaching Innkeeper. "Grovel stay! Grovel stay! Yes! No? Maybe?"

"Uh," was all I could say.

"Does this belong to you?" Durnan huffed with a beard. He barely gave me a glance, the bastard.

"Grovel says he says Grovel can stay if Grovel clean or get-off-my-leg! Gro-Grovel not go back, yes? Grovel work hard!" The Goblin was hard to understand through his accent, but to his credit he seemed to sincerely embody his namesake. I couldn't help it - but I had to somehow suppress the laugh when I caught the drow's glare.

"Do you just collect kobolds and goblins?" I wondered.

"Nau!" Solaufein insisted firmly, despite evidence to the contrary. He almost sounded petulant. He tried to gentle wriggle his person away from Grovel, almost like he was trying to be polite about it. It was hard not to laugh at him for being strangely adorable. "Well, I did send him up here," he amended carefully. "ButI do not own him."

Deekin's long nose wrinkled. "Deekin think goblins smelly and noisy," he determined, "and this one be no good in a fight. As bait, maybe."

"On that we agree, master bard," I asserted.

Solaufein swung his eyes up and down in exasperation. "He is harmless and was waiting by the well. All the other goblins of his tribe are dead."

"Grovel clean good, nice, yes, no, maybe?" the goblin asserted, literally clinging to Solaufein's leg like I had been earlier. The comparison in my head made me frown and twitch my tail. I felt suddenly very sorry for the poor creature. I accidentally swatted Deekin with my tail in morbid thought about this lonely little creature, and the kobold yelped in fright.

"Boss!" Deekin complained. "Goat-lady be beating me with her tail. Can you makes her stop?"

"So long as she is not strangling you with it, I do not care what she does with her tail," Solaufein told him bluntly. I couldn't suppress the laugh then. "Stand elsewhere if you wish. I am not in charge of her."

Durnan's throat cleared and he pointed at the goblin. The drow warrior started trying to nudge the goblin away from him, and then tried literally shaking the goblin off his leg, looking only mildly annoyed the entire time.

"Solaufein the Goblin-Whisperer," I named him, and he gave me the nastiest glare. It tickled me down to the tips of my horns.

"Alright," Durnan bit out after a few seconds of consideration while we bickered and Solaufein tried to shake the goblin. "He can stay, so long as he doesn't make trouble. We can use every willingly helping hand, in this wild time."

I'd never hear a goblin cheer in joy before. It was a little unsettling and my tail moved before my brain did as it whipped around and batted the goblin on the head gently away from Solaufein. Grovel whirled his arms back fell to the ground startled and went to pick up the broom, frantically sweeping around the dead bodies while muttering to himself. We all watched him do it for a few seconds before remembering why we were all standing there. "I also found this a'temra here in the possession of the ogres," the Solaufein summarized and gestured at me with a flippant hand. "Do you recognize her?"

"I don't know what an ah-tem-rah is, but it doesn't sound like a compliment," I stated. "And _no_, I wasn't in their _possession. _I was unlawfully enslaved. There's a difference!"

"My apologies," Solaufein murmured, with no small amount of amusement.

My tail twitched. Out of the corner of my eye, Grovel was trying to push one of the drow bodies over into the pit around the well. It was very distracting. "Well, if you need to restock or need healing, Thesta can help you," Durnan grunted and he gestured at the Sunite in the corner. "To be honest, I assumed you were dead, and that's what I told the wizards when they came knocking. I'll send a message to them by day that you're safe. Help yourself to the food upstairs, and anything else you need."

I nodded, doubting Durnan even remembered my name but still appreciative of his generosity, and then focused a glare on White Thesta. I would have rather died than gotten help from one such as them. Solaufein spoke, saving me the trouble of cursing more of the gods and damning my fate further. "We will return in a few hours. I came to report that Halaster is being held by the dhaerow in the lower levels. There is an entrance to the Underdark that must be closed. I require more potions, and then I will go back down and find him."

That surprised me. "You want to go _back _down there?"

He looked at me as if he knew me, and then his wine dark eyes pierced right through me. It was the oddest thing anyone had even done to me. And then he said the oddest thing I'd ever heard anyone say: "Of course I do. And I must. Why, do you not?"

I started laughing harder than before. I was about to tell him where he could stick his crazy ideas, but then it hit me for an amazing moment that I actually missed the temperature in the dungeon. I missed the warmth. It was something small in me that admitted that I actually wanted to go back, and find my way to the end of the maze, if only for a chance to get a crack at Halaster's corpse and kick it in the dangly bits. A part of me wanted the thrill of that death; Auril's Call, my father called it, when the icy winds that drew the ice trolls down into his native Black Raven valley howled, summoning the warriors of the tribe to answer. Tempus' war horn, was the way my mother described it - this clarion call that drove her to her first adventure on through her last. I felt it in my bones, but it was more like fire than ice. It was a desire I'd felt once that I'd thought long gone - the call of battle. Something thrummed in my veins, a power that seemed to emanate up _from_ Undermountain. The warmth came from my feet. I'd technically left the dungeon, but it was clear in that second that I met the drow's eyes that Undermountain hadn't left me quite yet.

So I stopped laughing and looked down at the bottom of the well thoughtfully. "Well, I wouldn't mind going back and killing more ogres," I admitted quietly. "That part was fun. And I wouldn't mind finding Halaster and kickin' his corpse in the arse."

I looked back at my savior and he smirked. Damned intelligent drow. "I heed a similar call." Had he read my mind? The rest of his words indicated he hadn't, but he was remarkably intuitive: "Whatever sickness is now at the heart of Undermountain, Eilistraee desires it purged. She sent me a dream . . . After contemplating it, I felt a call to action, and would rather that the people of Waterdeep remember that at least one of my kin aided them against this incursion. This is not my people at their best."

It was my turn to look at him like he was very, very stupid. "Are you telling me you came here following a dream?"

"Yeah, Deekin be asking him the same question," the kobold piped up, drawing my eye down to his level. "Deekin thinks elves and humans be silly sometimes, but Boss seem to know what he's doing. Deekin give him that. He be hero material, and good protagonist for Deekin's next book. Deekin think people without big dreams likes to be readings about people with them."

I grunted and raised my eyebrows. "You're a gentleman, author, and dragon tamer, master bard. Color me surprised. Your boss is either mad, or God-Touched. And either one is a very dangerous thing to be. I tend to steer clear of prophecies and gods and such. They seem to want to have nothing to do with me, which is just as well, as I want nothing to do with them." I turned to Durnan who had stewing in contemplative silence after hearing that Halaster was captured. "I don't like that look about yer face, Durnan. It's entirely too thoughtful, and I find that offensive."

The burly human Innkeeper huffed at me. "No magic I know of could keep the Blackcloak down in his own lair," he voiced quietly. His eyes reached Solaufein's. "Halaster _is_ Undermountain. It . . . You will understand the further into the dungeon you get." I understood a little of the madness at the edge of his eyes. There was a bit of fear in Durnan, I could smell it beneath the sweat, musk, and stench of kobold. Time was runny in Undermountain, and without a sense of time passing, your sense of self became all mucky. I'd forgotten that he'd spent more time in there than I had, in his life. "It is a madhouse you're descending into. A deranged prison. And its Warden is missing. So if your goddess truly sent you, then you might be the only one who can get there. Can you disguise yourself as one of their scouts or patrols, and infiltrate them?"

Solaufein looked at me, and then at Deekin. "That was my intent. We will need invisibility scrolls and potions if something goes wrong. I already have a piwafwi from one of their scouts."

I didn't know what a piwafwi was, but it sounded important - and it sounded like the drow had a plan. Half of me railed and shivered at the thought of going back to Undermountain, in all the wrong ways. I longed to wreak havoc, to tear, to destroy. To avenge. The demon in me clawed at the surface - which reminded me . . . "Oi Durnan, I don't suppose yer wife has a nail file of some kind? Or even a whetstone. Sharp knife? Anything? I-I can't wear boots like this." I pointed at my toes in emphasis.

The kobold laughed at my predicament. Laughed. Oh, I was gonna get him. Maybe I'd push him into Ol' Blue and see how hard he laughed while being electrocuted. "What're you laughing out, ye mangy lizard? You're not even wearing bloody pants!" I criticized.

"She has a point, Deekin," Solaufein appeased, but then turned to me. "You are also not wearing a pants."

I guffawed. My chainmail and tunic went down to my knees, at least. Also, my tail made it rather . . . Complicated. "I was a captive! What's his excuse?"

The little bard was aloof. "Deekin not wear pants because they not be making any in Deekin's size with big enough hole in backside for Deekin's tail," the kobold defended reasonably and adjusted his pack on his shoulder. "And also because they be ruining Deekin's aesthetic."

"I'll find something for you, lass," Durnan interjected diplomatically, and rose from his seat. "Though I doubt I have pants you won't tear in the rear."

I growled as the Innkeeper walked off while the kobold laughed some more. "Sorry," Deekin finally announced after a moment. "But Deekin like not being on receiving end of jokes about pants for once."

"If anyone makes another comment about my tail or nudity again, I'll help Grovel push them down the well," I threatened.

The kobold and the drow exchanged a look that I didn't like. Solaufein smiled at me. "I preferred the nudity." He stalked off to bargain with White Thesta, the Sunite, while I just stood there somewhat dumbfounded by him.

I didn't really want to go back up to the Yawning Portal, and I wasn't sure about any of the new people inhabiting the Inn since Waterdeep had been shut down. I knew that before I had gone in, Durnan was an alright sort - his wife was a mite tetchy and threw me out on account of me horns initially, but he convinced her to look past that. Paladins. Ugh. I accidentally on purpose thwapped Deekin a few times with my tail until he meandered his way over to his boss, and then back upstairs presumably to get a meal. If they accepted a kobold bard, I felt I must have been in special company . . . But the Sunite was guarding the stairs up, and I didn't want to be near her.

Frustrated by my dilemma, which shouldn't have even been a dilemma, I sat down on the makeshift bench near the Well's control mechanism where Durnan had been, and studied my hands. I suddenly didn't know what to do with myself now that I was not in hostile company, and in complete possession of my faculties I had some entertainment in the form of Grovel as he tried to shove bodies into the well to 'clean.' No one appeared to be stopping him, so I eventually started pushing them down with the goblin, taking a little satisfaction in watching them fall and hearing the crack at the bottom.

Solaufein eventually made his way back over to me. "What are you doing, and . . . Why are you doing it?" His brows knitted. His words registered as sarcasm, but his tone suggested he was genuinely perplexed.

"Throwin' bodies down the well with Grovel. I'm not going near that priestess," I blurted, "and I don't know what else to do. Whose else is going to help him? I'd rather be down there killing things, honestly. When are we going back?" I felt jittery, like the battle-rage hadn't worn off yet. I felt restless.

He stared at me. Solaufein was not an ordinary drow, this much I had figured. He was a warrior of some skill, but so were many drow. Not too many were nice, like him. Perhaps what struck me so odd about his was his sheer, blithe sincerity in all his manner. It was as refreshing as it was odd. I supposed I fell somewhere down the middle of most people - I felt bad about not helping people sometimes, or sorry for them when they were going through rough times, but I didn't often go out of my way for strangers. He'd gone comparatively very far indeed out of his way to help me. I didn't act on my dreams. I was too interested in my own survival; and yet . . .

There was the other side. I had no idea who my birth father was. My real father is an ex-Uthgardt barbarian who taught me everything I needed to know about life. The other father, the one that must've raped my mother, had never been of interest to me until my powers manifested. A shadow has had more influence on my life than the real person. I'd run away from my father and mother, after Brega . . . Ah, Brega.

I touched the stone pendant at my neck and stared down the well, where Grovel and I had been tossing the bodies of dead, scavenged enemies. I wasn't really good or nice. Those were arbitrary words anyway, as fleeting as the wind carrying a bird. I'd escaped captivity but wasn't free - I was a leashed animal, content in my rein until it choked me. Undermountain had stirred the demon in my blood. I felt the call of battle after getting revenge on the ogres just as surely as my real father had in the howling winds of the north. It was something I hadn't felt in years, not since the plague hit. The Wailing Death had not stricken me, but my demon had seemed to lose its voice after it.

I didn't like Solaufein's eyes on me anymore - he was too perceptive for his own good. I didn't know what he was perceiving about me, but I could feel his eyes deducing me whenever he looked my way and I didn't like it at all. He was having the strange effect of causing me to dice myself into mental pieces.

"I have never met another Eilistraee follower," he suddenly confessed in a weary voice. I looked at him, away from the well, and felt the pull of the dungeon on my soul a little diminished with my attention astray. "I know you are sick of me speaking about religion—"

"It's like once every bloody mark with you! Nigh, clockwork!" I growled, putting more irritation into my voice than I sincerely felt just to see if it got under his skin.

It didn't. He was completely unaffected by all my tactics. "I apologize if I have offended you. I will not push the subject."

"No, just spit it out. Don't give me that look." Plus I was still starved for conversation after my enslavement. I didn't like religious talk, but he wasn't trying to convert me - just sharing his experience, and I found that valuable. My bluster was more instinctive than purposeful.

He began to speak low, barely above a whisper, and the intensity of his tone arrested my attention. "All of my life, and I have been alone in my faith, surrounded by Lolth fanatics. For most of my life, I was one of them, though I loathed every second of my existence. Save for the last ten years, I knew nothing but the city of Ust'Natha as the weapon master of House Despana, and head of the Male Fighters' Society. I trained the warriors of our city. I led our battles, our raids, our wars. For hundreds of years I killed as the right arm of the handmaidens, and I did not ever believe I could endure an existence free of it; I was certain I would die at any moment, almost every day. I assume you know only a little of my people. To survive in the Underdark, you must walk hand in hand with your own death. My home is a . . . Terrible and beautiful place."

Memories swam of piling the bodies of my neighbors with my father, bodies of our workers, our friends, our soldiers, our people and lighting them on fire. I remember looking at my father, to my side, and recognizing my own heart beating in his chest. I'd never before felt such love from another being, but my father and I were fairly certain that the death would eventually claim us all and we didn't mind getting all teary on each other on account of it. Smoke got in our eyes, was the excuse that Drak and Binne had both sniffled out that day.

I felt, when Solaufein spoke, that a part of him spoke of that same feeling. There was accent to his words that seemed stronger now, when he spoke of his homeland. I had no idea why he was telling me this at all - we didn't know each other very well, having only met in the last few hours really. I admit there was a surprisingly easy and immediate connection between us after he had saved my life, and we'd had a terribly fun time flirting and killing things together. However, he certainly held my eyes with unwavering calm. When he did not speak again for a moment, I asked, "How did you ever get out?"

He smiled very briefly, but then the smile fell. Clearly not a pleasant memory for him, judging by his reaction. "I was saved. Spared, perhaps is a better word. A group of surfacers disguised as drow infiltrated my city, and I escaped in their company before it was largely destroyed by a silver dragon."

My eyebrows crawled up my forehead and my tail curled up in curiosity. "I sense a mighty tale there."

"For another day, maybe never; I fear if I utter it aloud Deekin will write it into a book," he grimaced. "The short version of the tale is that I had a dream, and then I saw an opportunity. Similar to what is happening to me now. You may not take much stock in dreams and I can understand why. You have surely wondered where the gods were, when you were suffering most. I know you must have, because it is what I have done."

I snorted. "Oh, gods are just an excuse for morality. They are ephemeral, like words, and disappear as easily. They crave mortality even as they condemn it, and act like spoiled children when they are not appeased." I had some strong feelings about the divine, to understate it. "That being said, Tymora seems like an alright sort." Did that make me a Tymoran, if she was the only god I'd ever given any consideration? A goddess of probability - mathematical principle - seemed like the only thing you could really trust, in a world that made no sense. Change, chance, randomness - this was the very order of things. My mother may have been a cleric, but I respected Tempus as a deity - I just didn't worship him. And why did it always have to be about religion with this bugger? Was he trying to convert me to something? He was pissing in the wind, if so. So I told him, "I believe in the gods as I believe in everything, but I don't worship them. Although I know little of your goddess. I thought she was the goddess of song and dance. She can't be too awful if she sent you my way, I suppose."

"There are some dances made to honor her, I have heard," Solaufein spoke after a moment's consideration. "From what I have read about her worshipers, they sing and dance often in her praise. I have never done so, myself. She is also a goddess of the moon, the patron of drow that turn away from . . . She whom I will not name. Eilistraee is also considered the goddess of swordplay. In ancient Tethyr she was once honored as a god of death and righteous retribution. Mortals call her Selune, elves Sehanine, but no matter the incarnation or depiction her light is the same."

"That certainly makes sense," I complimented. "Seems like you were naturally drawn to her faith."

He nodded and seemed pleased at my understanding. "It feels like a natural inclination, to me. But as I said, I have never met any others. I knew her only as a hope of something better in my nature before I ever learned she had a name, or even a face. I was certain that once I fled Ust'Natha that the Handmaidens would find and drag me to the Orth'Orbbcress eventually." Drow language was lost on me, but contextually I understood that he was still talking about Lolth. A thoroughly nasty deity. "It took me twenty years after that to gain the strength to utter my goddess' name aloud, and it was the moment before I left it behind forever. I saw a way out, and she led me to it. It may sound mad, and I do not apologize for it. I am who I am, and if she has truly called me here to Waterdeep, than that means she must have need of my skill." He patted the bastard sword at his side. "My skill is the only thing in my life I have ever truly been able to rely upon. Battle is all I have known: it is my trade and art."

I'd known battle, and death, and shame, and faithlessness, but also peace and contentment. I'd known my brief enslavement, but it hadn't really been that bad. I expected that my experiences would pale next to this lonely outcast's. My parents had always loved me. I knew of other planars out there born to strange circumstance in all manner of world or dimension - planeswalkers, they call them. Aasimar, tieflings. I was half something or other and lucky enough to be born into the least likeliest circumstance - to a pair of adventurers looking to settle down for good on a ranch. The kind of people who never once looked at me as though I was different than them because they took whatever the world gave to them, no matter how troubling, and gave it back with a shine. I tried to do the same in my own way, but rarely succeeded. Something in me was unavoidably destructive by nature, and I didn't think it was an accident that I'd always been drawn to battle. Something about Solaufein seemed very sad, for a moment while he spoke, and he reminded me of me.

I did my best to disguise my concern with humor. "Well, if she only sent you here to die, I expect you would've by now. As it stands, now we're being invaded by drow, and you're the only one who can successfully infiltrate them. Is Eilistraee also the goddess of irony? This certainly has the stench of fate about it."

I had noticed Solaufein did this funny squinty thing when he was amused, as if he were trying to hold back a laugh - or had trouble believing what he'd just sniffed and was trying to decide if it was horse shit. "What is the stench is fate?"

I sniffed about him, and he didn't lean away like he did last time I'd accidentally invaded his personal space. Cambion noses were a little more sensitive than an elf's, but I suppose the trade off was that they had better hearing than me (joke's on him, I stood at eighteen hands and his eyes barely hit my shoulder). I could hardly smell him under the scent of the blood of his enemies, however. It was a combination of ogre blood and something deep and dark, like gravesoil, as well as something light and green like mint. "Pah! I don't know. Everything stinks of unwashed kobold now," I scoffed.

I received a snort in response. "It is better than the smell of gol I will not get out of my cloak, thanks be to Grovel," he muttered and made for the stairs. I grinned and followed him up when he mentioned food, as I didn't appear keen. I didn't even mind that I had to walk past the Sunite, although her eyes lingered on me and it grated against me nerves. I didn't even glance at her, though. Proud of myself for that one.

Mhaere, Durnan's holier-than-thou wife, made my skin itch when she glared at me for a little while before seemingly getting over it when her husband distracted her. She definitely didn't like that she had to serve me food, but I felt my tail give away my happiness with its swish before my smirk confirmed it. It was only a stew, and rather bland, but it was positively heavenly.

I lingered near him or the drow more out of a sense of comfort, I supposed; I felt no kin to anyone in that room. The rest of the adventurers all had suspicious eyes. Durnan eventually returned with a small file and pair of boots courtesy of his wife, who had started avoiding me when she noticed I felt uncomfortable in her aura, according to the Innkeeper. Nice enough of her, I suppose. Still hated paladins, but nice of her. Her feet were too small, though, so I ended up having to take a pair of his instead.

I had perched next to the kobold bard, despite not liking the smell or sound of him when he clearly hadn't bathed in several weeks. He had his charming moments, but his singing might literally kill me one day, I was certain. The scent wasn't so bad in hindsight, but it was clear that it'd been a while since anyone in that room had bathed. Still heaven compared to Undermountain's residents. Deekin was terribly chatty, I discovered, which suited me fine. I hadn't spoken to anyone in a month besides an ogre mage who mistook himself for a courtier. I'd take what I can get.

Deekin had taken out a large leather-bound book and began writing in it as we spoke. I turned my attention to the darty-eyes-adventurers all around. No one approached us save one - a lovely crimson-haired bard woman who introduced herself as Sharwyn and offered her hand, and a curtsy when I took it. "Now aren't you a fancy lady," I complimented. She'd struck me as familiar, but perhaps that was true of all bards. I inclined my head and let my hand fall forward, rather than get up and curtsy. I was lazy, it's not a crime. "That's a proper greeting, that is. I be Binne. That be Deekin." I jabbed a thumb at the lizard.

"We're previously acquainted," she nodded daintily at the reptilian bard and gave me a disarming smile.

"Yeah. Boss finds bard lady in Undermountain dead til Deekin whack her with a rod," Deekin summarized for my benefit. "She not get very far in dungeon, though," he added slyly.

Sharwyn winced. "That's . . . Not really necessary to mention, is it? Although, yes, it is true. It stings my pride to admit. I'd rather not dwell on my most recent untimely death, thank you, Deekin."

"I got enslaved by ogres," I bluntly told her. "Undermountain's a shite-hole. Don't feel bad about it."

"So our mutual savior mentioned." Sharwyn seated herself across from us on the table. A waft of something like plums hit my nose pleasantly, and I was struck with jealousy that she'd clearly been afforded a bath recently. I had a one-track mind. Deekin was at my side, but turned his attention to a book he had in his possession that he had been scrawling incomprehensible notes in. I wondered what on earth could've had his attention so, but it mattered not. I stared at the bard, trying to figure out what it is she wanted. "I actually think we may have met more than once," she announced, startling me. "In Neverwinter, yes?"

I perked up instantly. "Neverwinter?! I'm from there!" I crowed happily. "Oh, how's it been? I've been gone away too long. Is it snowy there yet? Please tell me it is. Oh! I miss the snow!"

"No snow, but there's a lot less plague than there was before," she answered with a sarcastic wave of her hand, "but other than that, 'tis going along as it always has been. I have been away from some time myself. I remember you, actually, but it has been a while. It helps that you stand out," she added candidly. "You are Binne Ofgren - I think we first met outside of Blacklake. You were also in the forces at Port Llast, and volunteered for Gend as I and my friends did. We rarely spoke, though, to my regret, and must have only exchanged a handful of words here and there. I confess I was a little self-absorbed back then and overlooked you. Strange, how many of us who survived the Wailing Death and the Shadow War should find ourselves here."

I searched my memory and tapped my chin. "Let's see," I murmured as I rifled through the haze of loneliness and horniness and hungry to try and remember fuckall about Neverwinter. I'd dimmed a lot of my memories of the plague and war with alcohol. "My father had volunteered to clean out the plague-mad that had taken over the former city quarter . . ." Absently, I noted Deekin's flurried scratching. Was he . . . Recording this? Bah, I'd ask later. "I remember the nobles had started hoarding grain from the storehouses like it was a dragon's gold," I went on as I picked up steam, "So I'd gone with my Da to join the guard when the city was quarantined, since Ma was was staying with her family in Blacklake when they first closed it off and they wouldn't let her out. And they wouldn't let us in to see her without joining the bloody guard! I thought, eh what . . ."

I paused and swam for a moment in unpleasant memories. We piled the bodies on top of each other and lit them afire, and knew that none would mourn them because all that knew them had died from plague as well. Farmhands and their families we'd found dead in their homes, and piled our friends inside to light their homes on fire. I used to find thrills in ancient tombs and killing Zhents before I came home to watch the city of my youth die. It was as if, while the plague ravaged Neverwinter and we were all trapped inside, the demon parts of me became as still and silent as the corpses of them what we put out of misery.

The drow had somehow known, better than I just by watching me, that I craved that fire again. I'd felt it, or something like it, when my collar was removed. He must've recognized it because he saw it in himself. "Damn, Solaufein was right," I accidentally said out loud. I dismissed Sharwyn's questioning glance. Still, I didn't recall any bards, but I rarely recalled specific details when I went into a battle-rage. "'Tis possible we have met and I can scarce recall," I admitted, "but my memory is failing me. I've killed a lot of people since, you know. That was a few years back, and much of it indistinct now, to my memory. Alcohol has blurred it."

Sharwyn smirked. "I imagine so. I have as well. Perhaps I can fill in some missing details for you - I was there with the man they later called Hero of Neverwinter."

"You knows the Hero of Neverwinter?" Deekin interrupted, teeming with interest. Strange to hear someone genuinely excited hearing about the so-called Hero without a drop of sarcasm. The kobold stopped in his scrawling for a moment. "Oooh! Deekin has lots of questions for you. There be a list somewhere in heres. Hrmm." His arm ducked into his pack far deeper than it physically could have, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it was a bag of holding. My eyes didn't understand what I had seen, at first

"I suppose I have some time to answer them," she acceded gracefully, "after all, you are the hero that restored me to life. I am at your disposal."

Deekin scoffed. "Deekin be no hero. He tell hero tales, is all."

I frowned at the kobold's swift and short-sighted self-assessment. "Now you do yourself too little credit, master bard," I told him sternly.

He glared at me. "It not be nice to make fun of Deekin."

I schooled my features into a plain mask. "If I hit Solaufein with my tail on purpose he'd chop it clean off and toss it in the well. I only do it to you because you let me get away with it." I whapped him on the back gently with it in emphasis, and he swatted at it, irritated. "You make it so easy. I know you to be far from weak, master bard."

He pushed away my offending appendage. "Gah! Deekin cannot be working like this! He not be sitting next to goat-lady anymore." He grumbled and positioned himself nearer to Sharwyn on the round table. "Now, Deekin has very important question for lady bard about Hero. Does he wear a cape? Or not?"

I tuned out the barrage of useless information. Deekin didn't appear to want to know anything useful about the man they had all mistaken for a Hero, just little details like his clothes and if his sword was shiny and what color were the eyes of his pet wolf, and if he loved the sad lady paladin and whether or not he was a kobold. He seemed genuinely sad that the Hero of the story wasn't a kobold, and even said he thought the rumor was too good to be true. Deekin was mostly disappointed that the Hero he'd envisioned didn't actually seem very heroic and mostly had to be bribed, bullied, and literally geased into action when he got saddled with the responsibility of saving Neverwinter after getting involved with the whole Aribeth and Fenthick debacle.

I believed Sharwyn's version of events and highly doubted someone like Aribeth would have been involved with him - and he surely would have bragged to me of such a conquest, as he did with everything else. He'd been my ale wife, after all. The salty Luskan ranger had struck me as a scruffy, flaming bawbag whenever I met him and I wouldn't personally be sorry if our last parting had been the last time I'd seen his hairy arse. Sharwyn had stirred up the memory of No Man's Land a little clearly, and Sharwyn was the authority on it all, as far as I was concerned. I had little to do with the Shadow War, or even the plague. Sure, I helped clean up the city and and fought in a battle or two and such, but that was far as my involvement got. I would never say I was 'in' the war. I barely touched it. After the Wailing Death was lifted from the city, I got saddled with escort missions during my volunteer period on account of my horns and propensity for massive amounts of collateral damage. Also, the one time I was sent to route cultists I pretended to be a fiend that they'd summoned and just got them really drunk instead, myself _and _their precious Hero included, and we all woke up naked in the High Forest surrounded by angry druids. After that Gend didn't ask me to help again.

As for the illustrious Hero, first few times we met I'd gotten into a ridiculous argument over ale down by this pub in the docks and we'd called each other every name under the sun. Bishop wasn't terrible looking and gave as good as he got, and past him being a flaming bawbag he managed to make me laugh, so we'd had a drunken bonnie bugger or two. It was hardly noteworthy. We'd gotten stinking drunk on a fair regular basis (along with me Da and half the rest of the docks, the plague was a strange time) and had a few mishaps, but that's not the sort of detail they probably thought to include in the official version. 'Gets wasted with demons every night' isn't the sort of thing they'd like to include in the Historias.

Second time I bumped into him, still had no idea who he really was and he still wasn't famous or nothing. I'd barely caught a glimpse of him as he brushed past me while I was getting supplies from Eltoora one day, rather rudely I might add. Arsehole barreled his way right through my purchase to demand her immediate attention as if the bloody world waited at his word. I recalled bowing obsequiously and making an arse out of myself, 'pardon me, I didn't expect to be in the presence of a king,' because I'd had a bad day full of grave-digging and he'd just been the icing on it. He stared at me while the wolf at his side panted and sniffed my hand. Bishop waited for me to be finished with my piece, bowed sarcastically then said, 'don't worry, your Majesty, this'll be short and painless,' and went right back to talking to Eltoora. I gave the wolf a few pats, and that was the end of our grand association. And not counting that incident in Blacklake and the whole cult shite in Port Llast that I barely remembered, the last time he and I had met he literally hit me in the arse with a stray arrow during the Battle for Old Owl Well against some Many-Arrows who thought they'd get the upper-hand while we were being routed by Luskans, and then we all got startled by that dragon showing up. Right in left cheek, just as the red dragon landed. Took me right out of the battle. If it weren't for the fact that he was already the Hero at that point and I was in so much pain, I would've probably tried to kill him, and then you'd be listening to a dead demon.

After he reportedly convinced Lady Aribeth to stand down during her siege, I suppose the "Hero" must've fucked off because I recalled her hanging on a wintry morning with a taste of bitterness in my mouth, and it was shortly followed by decree of the Nine that the Bishop's name illegal to publish or say aloud. He was officially exiled for lighting Castle Never on fire and trying to kill Lord Nasher, though no one knew whether or not that was true. He hadn't been seen, probably dead, good riddance. I didn't like paladins, at all, but it was . . .ugly. The crowd cheered for it. They scorned Aribeth even though she had dedicated most of her life to protecting them, and turned on them after watching her lover hang. Fenthick's crime had only been being not too bright and manipulated by a cult. Bishop's only crime was a desire to not be manipulated by arseholes. Aribeth's only crime was losing her faith. None of it seemed entirely healthy.

I'd met Aribeth all of once, before me ma, da, and I watched her take a swing from the hanging tree. I'd bumped into her and she had apologized. It was in Port Llast a while before she defected, and she'd had dark circles under her eyes. Her aura prickled at me as she hurried away when I awkwardly and impulsively asked her if she was feeling alright and wanted to talk. She didn't even know my name, and seemed conflicted for a moment before assuring me she was fine and rushed off. After that she'd stared at me once more, from across a ways, like I'd caught her eye. She'd seemed surprised by what she saw, and looked away. Probably just judging a lady by the horns. Paladins.

Durnan and his family had set up cots for all the adventurers and such that holed up there from the chaos outside. I didn't need to be told what was going on - the scent of fear was so strong in the room at times I felt nauseous. I dozed off to the sound of Sharwyn's voice telling tales of our native city, and felt a vague sense of regret in my Nether scrolls for having been neglected for so long. I had spent almost every waking minute trying to find ways to break my collar until, at one point, I'd given up. I hadn't resigned myself to my fate, but I knew I could not break it on my own. I'd waited, and cursed, and waited, and cursed, and truth be told I had no way of knowing how long I'd truly been down there. I'd found a pathway to the second level only by trial and error with portals in different patterns. I'd spent a whole week on the test until I'd found the right combination. I had my mind on other matters, is what I'm saying.

I'd been foisted of my armor and clothes for laundering and cleaning and allowed a nice warm bath, which surprised me a lot since I wasn't aware I was allowed to be treated nice by Durnan's wife's order, but hey. Maybe they aren't all so bad. The downside was I'd been given an ugly shift to wear until the morning, but the upside is I was now very clean and grateful to be so. I even told Tamsin to tell her mother thank you, since it was probably the only nice thing a paladin had ever done for me.

I'd tried to fall asleep on one of the cots they gave me, but Solaufein's offer rang so loudly in my head that it drowned out the rest of my thoughts. I could hardly find a moment's privacy with everyone running about and when he'd caught me earlier in an isolated moment, it had gotten me a little paranoid. It wasn't so much that I cared that people knew I was masturbating, it was just awkward to do it while someone watched you if they weren't your sexual partner.

I waited til everyone was asleep that I could see or tell and walked as quietly as I could up the stairs toward Solaufein's room. My heart pounded irrationally when I knocked gently on his door. Solaufein's feet padded over to the door and he opened it. I was greeted with his scent before my eyes adjusted to the sudden light; the gravesoil smell had thankfully abated, but there was a faint coriander somehow with something I didn't recognize. I'd never paid much attention to it before, because I assumed it was Undermountain that had set my teeth on edge, but there was something about him now that we were away from the place that bothered me. It wasn't quite an itch, but it felt . . . Tingly, like a menthol balm at the nape of my neck. I wasn't sure if I liked it.

He took in my appearance with amusement. It was strange seeing him out of armor with tousled hair. Not at all displeasing, just strange. "What is that?" he gestured to the nightmare I was wearing.

I plucked at the nightgown. "Couldn't wander about up here nekkid, or Mhaere might've boxed my ears. So I got this to wander about until they launder my things. Nice enough folks." I poked my head inside. "How come you got the big room?"

Solaufein opened the door. I had to duck to come in, blast being six feet. I did stand nearly half a head above him, but he was rather tall for an elf. "It was luck of the draw, as Tymorans say. It is the bridal suite."

I closed the door behind me and felt my tail twitch. "Who would have a wedding here? Above Undermountain?" I didn't believe it. "The great big death-puzzle?"

Solaufein shrugged and crossed the floor. He'd been in the middle of taking off his armor, it looked like, and he unclipped his sword belt to place it near the bed. "I was told that it was not uncommon. I have found humans to be extremely odd creatures."

"Oh, I'll agree to that," I said and tried not to think about my parents because it would've been uncomfortable to have that one my mind, and then floundered a little bit for a topic. It was suddenly silent. I'd never been very good at small talk. "So, er," I blundered.

The drow stared at me, or through me. His eyes had a funny way about that. "Take it off," he instructed. I didn't mind being naked, even preferred it, and that is how he met me . . . But it felt a little different now than it had before. Maybe because now, I'd actually had a bath. I worried for a moment that going further might somehow disrupt things, but I was past caring. I was more than ready. I stepped out of the fallen shift and forward, and started pulling off his clothes too, starting with his shirt.

"Where should I . . ." I trailed off, wondering where exactly he wanted to begin.

Solaufein gestured toward the bed. "You should lay down." I smiled and did so. I flopped back, feeling a little nervous about my horns and claws - but I managed to avoid sticking them into fragile bits of the bed. He approached, slowly, and I instinctively spread my legs. "Tell me if you want me to stop," he instructed.

Solaufein is direct, skilled, and patient. You could say that about his swordplay or his lovemaking; this much I learned that night. He crawled toward me on the bed like a supplicant petitioner and swiftly latched his mouth on my sex. The rush of blood suddenly had me seeing stars and letting out uncontrollable sighs that pleased him. I entered a place beyond words where I could only take simple direction as his tongue performed an ornate oral service that left me whimpering and laughing in joy at the same time. Perhaps it was because it had been so long since I'd lain with a man, or perhaps I'd never lain with one so skilled; I was not about to question my fortune.

When Solaufein pulled his head back for a moment to regard me, I met his languid gaze. "Your eyes glow," he observed with interest. I had to remember how to speak Common first.

"They do that in battle or arousal," I nodded, and felt something flame in my gut as his eyes wove around my curves. I felt like I was burning up and I found myself creeping forward on the bed on my hands and knees to take him into my mouth. I sheltered him kindly from my canines by wrapping my lips around him, and swirled my tongue around the head as I started to give him long strokes. His hand twisted in my loose hair and gripped my horns as leaned his head back and moaned, and the wanton sound of it set me quivering.

He pulled up at my roots lightly, gently pulling me away from him. "I will finish too early if you continue," he hissed. He explored my features with his calloused fingers, trailing from my brow to my lips.

"You talk too much," I informed him, and pulled him down to seal his mouth around mine. Fair was fair, and he'd said as much to me. I needed the touch of another as much as he did, so I knew he could not mind, but the act of kissing was a little more intimate than I think he was expecting. His lips didn't move to accommodate mine at first, as if he was confused, but he quickly obliged and pushed me further into the bed, grinding against me as I wrapped my legs and tail around him.

He drew me achingly close to the edge over and over again; first he had taken me and placed my knees nearly over my head, the height advantage I held making it entertaining for us both to find inventive positions and new angles. I'd had ridden him for a time and found another release of my own. He'd had his chance to torture me and I had a bit of fun denying him, but wondered at his discipline. He was a drow, I knew, and that had to mean he was used to women calling the shots. Their priestesses were infamously cruel and demeaning of the other sex, and submission seemed antithetical to their culture.

I let a wicked smile cross my face. "Take me from behind," I demanded. He blinked. Maybe it took him a few moments to remember words, as he said nothing, but his hesitation spoke. I let him take his time positioning himself and bent obligingly forward over my knees, and practically purred when he ran his fingers down my spine and all the way down to the tip of my tail.

It didn't take Solaufein long to figure out his pace. I bit my lip to keep from screaming too loudly a few times; something about the angle, perhaps, or the size of him being just right. I knew not what it is, but it felt divine, like a rage but less out of control. I was . . . Somewhere else mentally that he'd sent me, in some deeper and cleansing awareness. My tail had mostly been obstructive during our little experiment, but I found an out-of-the-way use for it and wrapped it around my belly through my legs to rub against the both of us. It was nice, having a prehensile tail sometimes. He'd taken his time at first in the position, but gasped at the new sensation and started ramming a bit harder and deeper.

I heard more than felt the sheets tear under my claws as I got sent into a climax so hard it made my head spin. A cry erupted from me out of my subconscious and clawed at the walls. I felt his discipline crack as his hands gripped one of my horns and the other my hair; an erotic, deep-throated groan erupted from his chest, and his seed was hopelessly lost somewhere inside of me as I felt him empty in a quick series of thrusts. It left the both of us gasping and content animals.

It was, altogether, a very nice evening despite the doom of things.

We laid about for a while before figuring out how to form words again. "That was . . . I'm . . ." They weren't the best words, but they were all I had.

Solaufein hummed in agreement and closed his eyes, breathing in deep. "Ssin'urne xunor," he hummed.

"That's a word for it."

". . . A dhaerow female would have found that position demeaning."

I scoffed. "I don't feel demeaned. Satisfied, yes."

He smiled and it was a nice and gentle look on his face. He was silent for a few moments. "I need to v'dri. I think your word for it is 'reverie.' If you want to leave feel free, or you may sleep here, but try not to make too much noise." His eyes fluttered in close before I could get another word in at him.

I told myself that I'd leave in a little while, and watched him for a moment. I got up to take a piss and clean up, then went back and cozied myself next to him, feeling safe and warm for the first time in years that I could recall. I quickly fell asleep and forgot all about leaving.

I kept on forgetting all about it until I woke up to a rather startled human girl shaking me and jumping back in fright when I bolted upright, startlingly awake. "AH! S-sorry miss!" The girl blurted. "I just w-wanted to tell you that we have your clothes ready, um . . ."

I rubbed my eyes and clucked in recognition. "Tamsin. Right. Durnan's, uh, daughter. Where am I? Am I dead? Stupid question, no, I'm obviously not." I shook my head from of my already-fading dreams. My dreams usually ended with me dying in some horribly fashion, but I'd gotten used to ignoring them.

Tamsin flushed all the way to her hairline. "Um, you are in the, er—"

I cut her off and finished my own thought. "Right! Undermountain. Right. Gotta prepare for that. Fuck. Yes, and if you have it, another bath would be lovely. Where'd that blasted drow go, anyway?"

Tamsin flushed to the roots of her hair, and it just hit me that I was a large cambion woman with big ol' horns and a flashy tail standing stark naked in the Hero of Undrentide's room. "M-master Solaufein is downstairs, madam."

Well, she'd found me stark naked, and there was no going back from that. I politely introduced myself. "I'm Binne. That's my name, you can use it."

"Y-yes, Mistress Binne." Her cheeks became several shades of darker red.

I snapped, feeling more amused than impatient at her embarrassed manner: "Stop stuttering! I'm not a 'Mistress.' And I'm not going to hurt you, or I'd have done it already. Why is it people are always afraid of me? Is it the height? Or the horns? Or the nudity?"

"I-I think it might be all of those things, milady . . . If you'll follow me to baths . . .? The water might be cold now, I'm sorry."

The second bath made me forget about all my fluffy-headedness and helped me realize that I felt better than I'd felt in years. My clothes and armor had been placed out of hands reach of the bath, so there was a bit of a chilly scramble to put on the chain tunic and boots and such, but it wasn't so bad. I'd even been given a nail file, though I'd accidentally broken it against my claws after getting my toes, which embarrassed me a little so I hid it in a potted plant and prayed silently they wouldn't find it.

I got downstairs finally and met Deekin, who started distributing communal potions of antidote and such to me. I was immune to most poisons (infernal blood thing), but the gesture was nice, and we were going up against sneaky drow so it probably was better to be safe than sorry. No sooner had I thought that then I noticed Solaufein's approach. I thought I would feel something different between us when we woke next, but I was pleasantly surprised to feel exactly the same as I had before. Just a little more satisfied. A little more comfortable.

He simply nodded at me. The fires had dimmed in the hearth since but I saw a few embers reflected from his eyes, glinting in the studs on his ears as he knelt to stoke it. This time, he was a looming, silent shadow save for the shock of white hair that was now cleaned and bound back in a short braid. I relaxed, and yawned. "Solaufein! Is it killing time, then?" I wondered.

"Almost. Get ready," he instructed, "if you still desire to. You may meet us by the well."

"M'ready. Lessgo." I yawned again. My body ached all over once I sat up, but in some pleasant as well as unpleasant ways. "Have you any potions of speed? I seem to be a bit slow. Ah, I haven't slept so soundly in ages . . ."

I sensed, rather than saw Solaufein impatient eye roll. "Your snoring would keep up the whole city," he grumbled and left me behind to fend alone and headed downstairs. It hit my horns on the door-frame downstairs twice in the process, giving Deekin some amusement at my expense, but I did eventually manage to get my arse back down the stairs to the well-room. I was less excited about it now that I was awake then I'd been before I fell asleep. The kobold was positively chipper the entire way down. Eventually the drow pointed out, in a tone of forced politeness that made me smile, that talking was a less than good idea until they were more certain of their surroundings.

Something niggled at my memory, but I was still trying to sort out whether or not I was still dreaming. Durnan hit the switch and barked a goodbye, while Solaufein nodded. I blinked a few times as the well clanked and clacked. It was a terribly slow machine, almost tortuous. Darkness crept up on us until all we could see was the glow of Solaufein's eyes, scanning us in the spectrum of heat.

"Where are we going?" I thought to finally ask.

"As far down as we can," Solaufein uttered ominously.

"Have you been past the second level? Because I know how to skip past it and get into Halaster's laboratory," I offered. "It's a shortcut."

He stared at me for a few seconds, light of his eyes abruptly cutting out and reappearing as he blinked in disbelief at my words. Or maybe he was staring at my hair. Without a mirror, it was assuredly awful. I patted at it self-consciously. "Why did it not occur to you to mention this before?"

"Deekin bets goat-lady forgets. He does that sometimes, which is why he writes things down." Was the kobold defending me? Or being sarcastic? It was hard to tell. Did he understand sarcasm at all?

I defended reasonably, "Well, it didn't come to mind before now. There's not much left in there 'cept for all the golems. I figured out a shortcut downstairs through the portals through days of trial-and-error. Getting to the lab may be tricky if the drow have been fiddling with things, though. They're sneaky, sordid bunch. Present company excluded."

"That be where Boss' cloak come in handy, yes?" Deekin supplied.

Solaufein's response was to sigh and pull a rather nice looking cloak out of Deekin's bag of holding. It was likely made of spider-silk, but its significance escaped me. What had he called it earlier, to Durnan? Blast, I hadn't been paying attention. "Are you just gonna walk up to them and say hello, then?" I wondered.

The drow warrior snorted, or maybe guffawed - it was hard to tell because he usually comported himself with dignity. He had none to spare for me, however. "Vendui abbanen, sjaad'ur ussta bran vithanna rothen. F'sarn reiyal kyreshorlh vigh!" He mocked.

I frowned. "That didn't sound complimentary at all."

Solaufein groaned and switched back to Common. "You are correct, it was not a compliment. I included hand gestures, but it now occurs to me you could not have possibly seen them. I have wasted a perfectly good joke on you."

I squinted. I saw only the glow of his eyes and his vague physical outline. It didn't help that he was wearing dark armor and had dark skin. I did not have darkvision, but I could see well in night conditions. I probably would survive in the Underdark, but not well. "I'm going to have to learn drowish to understand you, aren't I?"

"It is called Ilythiiri. Suffice to say that any sane drow would rightly think me mad. I would have to convince them I keep the two of you around for pleasure or sustenance."

Deekin made a whining noise. "Drow don't eat kobold! . . . Do they?"

Solaufein's sudden silence was an answer in of itself. "Any of my people we encounter I must approach alone. You and Deekin will remain in invisibility at a distance, and attack only at my signal. The background heat of Undermountain's lava floes shall provide good heat cover for you."

"That sounds very silly and complicated," I criticized. "It'd be far easier if we killed them all and resurrected one to interrogate," I pointed out, "and my plan wouldn't offer your backside up to them for stabbing like yours does."

He was full of eye rolls that morning - and it knew it was an eyeroll because I could hear it in his scoff. And here I thought we were becoming special friends. "Just be as quiet as possible, and does as I say." I followed behind Deekin when the well finally lowered and the dome opened to the dim light from the nearby lava floe beneath the Yawning Portal. I couldn't see the top when I tried to peer up, so far down we were. And the Underdark would be darker still . . .

I told myself I would only follow him until I killed all the rakshasa and ogres downstairs in revenge, for enslaving me. I would use him to kill them all, and in exchange I would help him with his drow problem. I couldn't help that he was a drow, mind you, but I was good at killing and so was he. After all, he'd saved my arse, and it was only fair, and the sex was pretty damn good, and he wasn't at all weird about it after like most would've been. He'd not exactly asked for my help, more . . . Simply expected it.

It felt strangely natural, despite the unnatural circumstances of our meeting, that I should follow him into coming battles. Maybe it was his bearing; he walked and moved his sword arm with the weight of years of experience. As an elf, who knew how many centuries he'd been around? Maybe it was how he spoke as if he knew me, and I'd never really had that before. I'd never felt like true kin to anyone but Brega, but here this stranger had taken me in stride and it felt like the most inexplicably natural thing to do. And maybe I'd stay because it seemed like he could use my help. And maybe he was nice to me, if a bit rude at times, but it wasn't because I had horns. And maybe if he criticized me it was sometimes warranted, because sometimes I had dumb ideas. And _maybe_ the kobold did amuse me a little.

Maybe this all wouldn't be so bad.

* * *

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

_Gol_…nasty-ass goblin  
_Nau_…hell nah  
_Rul'selozan…_ugh, gross!  
_Yaith…_fucking pay attention you crazy demon woman  
_Orth…_a real shithole of a place you don't want to be if you're Solaufein  
_Ssin_…kind of compliment you can only give to someone post-orgasm

_Vendui abb…_hey dudes, pardon my loud sex-slaves, as you can plainly see I am totally batshit


	3. Blackcloak

There is a lot of drow dialogue in the next chapter, and for reasons of it being annoying to the reader to have to constantly look down at the glossary because subtitles aren't a thing in text, not every line of dialogue in drow will be in the drow language, as half is from Solaufein's point of view. Halaster doesn't rhyme because this isn't Tolkien.

* * *

PT 1: BINNE

I was wrong. It was all very bad. Very, very bad.

It started off quite nice - we encountered a drow patrol that had just finished off a group of frenzied harpies and they were looking a little worse for wear. Easy pickings for us. Fighting had never felt so natural with another before, so fluid. It felt easy, and right. Solaufein explained that they were likely all that was left of an encampment of drow, and had anticipated less resistance than they found in Undermountain. He had stripped the adamantine chain off of one of their dead and donned it, and was looking very much like one of the dapper locals. He instructed Deekin spell himself and I under an invisibility spell, which was mortifying when Deekin brought out his cymbals in his pack and clanged them together loudly to complete the spell. Bards, ugh.

Then, Solaufein had donned the piwafwi, pulled his hood up, and walked off toward the patrol with nary a word. I wasn't even sure what the signal of his was for attack, but kept my energy coiled tightly in my gut for a quick entropic burst, just in case. My ears picked up on the whispered conversation from the next room as Deekin and I hid in the corridor. I was afraid to speak and ask him if he could make out what was being said, since I didn't want to be the one to burst Solaufein's cover.

Then, I heard the distinct sound of a few swords being drawn, and thought, 'fuck it.' I poked my head around the doorway and saw Solaufein standing there looking like he owned the ground he walked upon facing two drow males in leather armor. They were all sneering at each other, the three of them. The two men had drawn their swords, but were not pointing them at our dear leader. They all spoke in low voices, but even if I had heard them I was sure that I would not understand a lick of it. If only I'd thought to acquired a translation amulet at some point in my life. O'course, the ogres would've simply stolen it.

I tried to get a better look but made a slight scuffle. It was no louder than a rat and I thought I drew no attention, but I felt Deekin poke me in the side. Somehow his poke felt reproachful. I winced and continued watching, waiting. Neither male looked toward me and the scene hadn't changed, but I admitted Solaufein had a point about me not knowing a lick about stealthy-ness. Clearly, that was more his forte.

Quite suddenly, behind Solaufein, a wizard popped into invisibility - I only pegged him as a wizard by the robe and staff alone, which even amongst drow seemed stereotypical. I wasn't sure what Solaufein's signal was, but I wasn't about to stand and watch while he got ambushed. "Behind you!" I shouted and unleashed the coiled spring in my gut up through my chest and out of my palm, sending a beam of entropic light right at the wizard's back.

Fuck the plan. It was a bad plan. The entropic energy lashed out like a whip and coiled around the wizard's throat like an angry snake before he could activate a contingency. He screamed for a moment before he was choked and being dragged back toward my position by the energy recoiling into my hand. I reached out a dagger and ended his life before even thinking about what I'd just done - and behind me, the corridor exploded into action.

Deekin started clanging his cymbals together back in the hall we were spying in, scratching out something in his voice that I couldn't understand. Solaufein had drawn his sword with his left hand and threw the dirk from his hip right into the chest of the drow male on his right, just in time for him to block a blow and backpedal as the one on the left swung his sword hard with an enraged battle-cry. I couldn't be sure that the one he'd shot his weapon at was really dead, and threw the first spell that came into my head at him - a fiery eldritch blast that knocked him down, hopefully for good. I trusted Solaufein to handle the other - and sure enough, after a few minutes, he managed to cut the warrior down and proved himself the superior swordsman.

I caught up to him and he turned to look at me just as the entire room of drow became aware of us. Two of them had walked to the edge of their camp to speak with Solaufein, and now a whole seven other out of the nine-person hunting party were aiming crossbows and chanting spells at us. "Get the diviner," he told me just as a globe of darkness fell over my head.

I hadn't been in such bracing battle in a long time. It was briefly thrilling. I had a spell that would have assuredly helped Solaufein, but he was out of reach and thus on his own. I ran for cover from the volley of crossbow bolts and aimed a spell of fear at the distant archers, hoping it would at least keep a few distracted. It affected at least two of them who went to run in panic while the other one just seemed confused and annoyed and aimed a bolt at my head. I ducked in time and looked for the 'diviner,' probably the cleric of the group. I spotted her just as she entered invisibility, one of three females in the group, the other two who were a swordswoman and a wizard focusing on Solaufein.

The spell I'd saved for Solaufein I used on myself, gaining the aspects of a spider with the ability to walk upon walls. They weren't expecting when I ran to the wall for me to run UP it and on the ceiling. I shot forward along the stone ceiling and jumped down in front of the place I knew the cleric was, and used my nose to locate her as best as I could. I aimed for where I thought her face would be with a wide blow and found my hand connecting with plate armor. It hurt, but I had her. Feeling myself growl, I reached my hands forth and summed that innate fire I'd felt I lost not long ago. She was invisible, not fireproof, and became engulfed in flames. After that it was a simple matter of knocking her down and finding the next enemy.

But, the next one found me. A warrior had been guarding her that I'd kind of forgotten about, and in my haze of idiocy he reached forth and stabbed at me. His blow glanced my chainmail but left a bruise I'd surely feel later, and I stumbled back. He advanced on me just as the cleric managed to put herself out by rolling, but she was still panicked and a mess. I yet had time. I jumped back on the wall and used it to leap around him - but rather than attack from behind, like he was expecting, I ran toward the priestess and slit her throat before she could push me off of her. One-on-one, I was no match for him. He snarled something decidedly nasty-sounding at my retreating form.

I ran for the other wall, clutching my stomach, and crawled up to the ceiling again for safety. One of the archers had recovered from the fear spell and was trying to hit me, only to be suddenly bowled over by a large bear that I assumed came from Deekin. That, or Halaster had a better sense of humor than I thought. The bear sat on the drow, completely rendering it immobile and swatted at anyone that tried to push him off with a swipe of his paw. Crossbow bolts probably tipped with all manner of horrible poisons were stopped by his thick hide, and he swatted them away from his furry body like gnats.

From my place on the ceiling, I shot out a few more eldritch blasts, glancing off of armor or sometimes causing them to stumble or fall down. Most of them appeared to have enchanted armor and some innate magic resistance, but I distracted them enough or caused enough damage that it was fairly easily for Solaufein to pick them off. I kept the archers occupied, along with Deekin's bear, and finally ran back down the ceiling and walls when the last one had snapped out of his terror to reorient himself. I saw him aiming a blow at Solaufein's unprotected back just as he stabbed one of the wizards right through, and he never saw me coming. I had just my dagger and a kukri we'd found strapped to my lower back, and drew both - one to back-stab, and one for the throat. He fell with a gurgle, dead at my feet in a growing warm pool. I stepped out of it, conscious of my borrowed boots.

The battle had been over much faster than I anticipated. The drow had likely not expected, or been prepared for much resistance. They'd been battling ogres and harpies and who knew what for months, probably while I'd been held captive and Solaufein had been doing much the same. Despite that, we had fairly short work of them which was a feat for three individuals. The bear kept the last one who was alive immobilized and muffled. I patted it on the shoulder while Deekin clanged his way back into visibility. He was uninjured, Solaufein was winded and appeared to have been nicked by one of the bolts, but did not look much worse for wear.

I was about to congratulate him when he fell on his knees, wincing. I ran forward, feeling worried. "Where is it?"

"It is poison," he huffed. "Deekin!"

"On it, Boss!" The kobold chirped and ransacked his bag of holding. He came out victoriously with a potion bottle, which the drow snatched from his hands. After Solaufein drank it, he breathed in and accepted my offered hand to assist in standing up.

"Their crossbows are always poisoned," he informed me. "Were you struck?"

I didn't think I was. "I don't feel funny. Probably not, or I'd feel funny. Oh, and someone's bear is sitting on a live one," I gestured over to the giant brown bear on top of a wheezing drow, who could probably only breathe due to his armor plating.

Solaufein harrumphed. "I suppose we will have to interrogate him as you suggested. Thank you," he said suddenly, stopping me short. "I had heard the wizard behind me, but would not have had time to react. I may have needed Deekin's rod if you had not reacted so quickly."

I beamed. "My timing's alright. I'm not so good with stealthy, though."

He nodded and stepped forward toward the bear. Then, he paused and turned back to me. "Were you walking on the walls?" He asked with an amused expression.

"I was going to cast it on you, but you ran off too quickly," I admitted. "Pretty fun, yeah?"

"Interesting," he mused and moved to the downed drow archer.

The drow would have refused to speak with any of us, but clearly held no love for Solaufein. I watched the interrogation eagerly all the same, since I'd never seen Solaufein next to another drow. There was really no comparison, though. Solaufein was taller than the other man, better looking, and a little harder in the eyes. I doubted they'd been eating very well, living in Undermountain as they had been. It seemed clear from their appearance, up-close, that they'd been trapped here as much as I was. The archer's eyes were full of spite and he stank of fear; I doubted anything he told Solaufein would be the complete truth, but it was all probably as much as he expected.

After a heated interaction, the only word I could distinctly hear was 'dough-bluff' and the bear was banished as Solaufein cut down at our prisoner with his sword in a two-handed stroke that cleanly beheaded the enemy. The gesture startled me a bit because it was so sudden; also because I hadn't been sure of what to do with our prisoner, now that we held him at our mercy. It seemed the most efficient route; Solaufein performed the kill expertly and expressionlessly.

"They serve a powerful female calling herself 'Valsharess,'" he reported in an even voice as he flicked and cleaned the blood off of his blade with our former prisoner's cloak. "She has done this because the Spider Queen has gone missing."

That was hard to believe. "Ha! First Halaster now Lolth?" I scoffed. "Is whatever kidnapped Waukeen holding them all?"

Solaufein shrugged and stood up to sheath his weapon. "No female could espouse herself as quar'valsharess with she-whom-I-will-not-name missing. Valsharess means 'queen' and 'goddess' in my language. It is a title reserved for Her exclusively, and she is a . . . very jealous deity, to put it mildly. This female has dismantled their houses, their cities, and united them under a common banner to invade the surface and take over the city of Waterdeep. They have been trying to do this through Undermountain, and are somehow holding Halaster hostage so that they might do so unmolested. It appears to have backfired, as many of them are now trapped in Undermountain and cannot return."

I processed this. Somehow a drow priestess, or woman or mage of some kind (I was supposing she was a very clever mage) had kidnapped the Blackcloak. A funny chill started at the base of my spine and spread up to my head. It made my tail twitch in anticipation. "Well, then it wasn't a waste. Surely this Valsharoon lady could not have done this alone," I wondered.

The drow squinted at me. "_Vel_sharoon is the patron of necromancy, Binne," he gently corrected.

I pretended I hadn't heard him, because I hadn't known that. "Halaster is no mere wizard. He writes his own spells, he's thousands of years old, and madder than a hatter. I doubt any drow priestess of any strength could capture him, even if she was the god of necromancy."

"I know little of Halaster," the drow admitted, "but I know my people's politics, and considering how massive an alliance this one styling herself as the new Valsharess seems to have, it would have taken a considerable amount of betrayal and planning. He said she overthrew the Great Houses of Menzoberranzan and he did not lie, which is a feat I would have thought impossible. Trust me, politics is one of my specialties."

I smiled. "I thought your specialty was swords."

"I have many specialties," he said wryly and returned my smile, but then it fell as his expression became thoughtful. "The other man confirmed that Halaster is being held on one of the lowest levels of Undermountain which does lead to the Underdark. No excursions have been unable to return there to resupply as the Halaster was able to separate their group from their main forces. Either they were abandoned to their fate, or none could open the door from the other side. Now creatures have been fleeing Undermountain as a result, up toward the surface and wreaking havoc." His lips down-turned. "They all expected to die, but did not expect us."

Deekin chimed in, "well, they not be very smart then. We be heroes!"

"Right you are, master bard," I agreed. "Now, let us loot their corpses for valuables!"

"You have to share any shinies you find," Deekin warned. "We be splitting loot three ways."

"I care not about the loot," Solaufein objected. After a pause, he added, "but if you see any swords, let me know. The weight of mine is . . . All wrong."

I wasn't privy to the problems of swording, having always preferred big things with which to hit. I'd grown up around axes, scythes, and whips used to tend to the wood, hay, and horses, but in the war I'd stuck with an axe and a spear. I was a little out of my element down there, but I'd never felt more in tune with my innate power in my life. I picked up an adamantine chain tunic from one of the males, who were the only ones even close to my height. It was tight, but it was better than my current armor, and felt a little lighter. The diviner's cloak had been valuable before I set it aflame, but a few of the wizards held some goodies that Deekin carefully split. I kept one of their staves as my share and strapped it to my back as a last-resort measure (it was loaded with a few contingency spells Deekin had been able to identify, and it looked shiny), and a dagger with poison enchanted into it, and felt a little better about my odds in the next battle. Solaufein, per his declaration, did not care and let Deekin hold onto his share. He kept his current gear, though we did find a pair of boots with a permanent haste spell upon them that I suggested he keep. His eyes gleamed when he took them, and while anyone would have liked them, it was the only thing he wanted.

I'd completely blown the plan up, but it had worked out alright in the end. Solaufein didn't lecture me at all about it, which was nice of him - he struck me as a pragmatic fellow. We'd gotten the information, and that was all that mattered. For a while it was a question of whether or not we'd head back up and get a message to Durnan, but Solaufein decided against it and determined that he wasn't going to return until Halaster was freed. I was hoping the bastard was dead, personally. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as my mother says.

The south part of the dungeon was fairly clear, except for the sleeping blue dragon. That part had been a bit of a cinch in the plan, but thankfully its snores were so loud that it didn't hear any of us creeping by. Deekin had wanted to loot it but couldn't convince Solaufein to go and check the chamber out for any gear; he was deadly, not suicidal. Then, the kobold took it upon himself to investigate and came back with a rather nice looking set of blue armor that none of us had any use for, other than to sell. We all shrugged and went back about our business.

Unofficially, I had been in charge of directions. The problem was that I was struggling to remember exactly where I'd started the portal-jumping. We had to return to the entrance to the well-room before I could orient myself and lead us toward the right one.

I hoped I sounded authoritative in a way I didn't feel. "Ahem. There's a specific order to these that we have to go in, and some of them will be easy and some of them will be dangerous. Some of them might also be very random. I can't predict what we're going to see or run into since these sometimes fire us off into random places, but from what I could figure out—"

"Just do it already," Solaufein demanded, and I shut up.

We ran through the first portal and it was a little disorienting. The yellow light flashed until it faded, depositing us down a blank hallway that I didn't recognize. The others seemed none the worse for wear, so I looked around for the next portal which was down a fair ways. Instincts alerted me to the presence of danger just as Deekin shouted about a trap, and I jumped back in time to avoid getting a dart to my sides and neck. We waited for the volley to stop before running ahead and jumping through the next one.

This one led us to a chamber situated between two hot pools of magma that nearly choked the air. I felt a little bit fine, but I worried about the others who seemed a little worse for wear. I hurried us to the end of the chamber and stepped into the next yellow spinning light, this one situated right into the wall rather than the ground.

The next one I actually recognized, having stumbled into it before by accident when we were running from some harpies - that is, the party I'd been adventuring with before. So long I'd been down there that I'd forgotten their faces and names. One of them had died of poison in this room from a trap. "Hang on," I said to my new companions and looked about - and sure enough, there was the body of a halfling in plate armor. "Huh. Guess nothing must come down here." I bent down and he still seemed intact - so I stripped him of his potion belt, since I was sure he wouldn't mind. "I came down here with this fella. Can't remember him for the life of me. Might be some loot about, maybe we should pause a bit?"

Solaufein looked queasy. "Very well," he assented, and leaned on a wall.

I was concerned. "You all right? You seem a little ruffly."

His brows pinched. "I do not know that word."

"Worse for wear, I mean," I clarified. He had started to teach me the odd drow word in exchange for my teaching him insults and colloquialisms.

He took a deep, calming breath. "Ah. No. I hate portals."

"They not be Boss' stomach's favorite!" Deekin called over, apparently having overheard. "Hey, guys! Deekin finds something. Come look!"

We meandered over in the dim light toward the sound of Deekin's voice. The light got brighter as we noticed a few lit torches, illuminating a larger chamber lined with thrones. Large and ornate, made of stone and ivory and mithral - there seemed to be about nine of them in total. Upon each throne was a skeleton, seated - some with weapons in their hands, some with crowns. It was all very odd, and seemed perfectly within Halaster's idiom.

"This be the hall of Sleeping Kings," Deekin informed us in a hushed voice. "Deekin not sure if they be sleeping or dead, but probably both. Why Halaster keep a bunch of dead, sleepy kings in his death-dungeon? Oh, wait, Deekin answered his own question."

"Who knows why he does anything he does," I muttered, eying the skeletons. "Let's not wake them up."

I expected our drow leader to chime in at some point, but his corner was silent. I turned to look where I last saw him, only to double-take when I noticed his shadowed form approaching one of the thrones of the king's. Wary, I followed while Deekin started looking at a staff clutched by one of the skeletons up close.

Solaufein was staring at a particular skeleton, seated and resting forever in his throne/prison. Clutched in its hand and resting across its thigh bones was an ornate black longsword made of some kind of glass or stone, I couldn't tell - it was no recognizable metal to my eyes. "This is a tomb," the drow commented as he heard my approach by his shoulder.

"Right, well, the portal's just outside the door here, if I re—"

"You there!" A foreign voice suddenly barked, snapping the tense air. "Mortal! Person! Thing! With the moving fleshy parts! Yes, I'm talking to you, sir in the shiny armor with the - er - couple of slaves? Is it? I'm not judging! Just trying to get your attention. Look over here, yes, I'm the extra-shiny sword, if you'll just turn your attention my way please."

Solaufein and I looked at each other, startled. He looked back at the skeleton. "Are you speaking to me?" He wondered.

Suddenly, the sword in the skeleton's lap began to emit a deep red glow, almost the color of blood. The light within fluctuated with each word that was spoken by the sword, as if it was speaking _through _the sword. "Yes, you! Look down! No, not at the floor, at the glittering _sword! _Yes, thank you. That's it. Hello!"

All three of us stared at the sword, and then shared a look between each other that spoke volumes as to what we each of us thought of Halaster's ridiculous death puzzle. "You are a sword," Solaufein stated in a perfectly dour tone that could've been an imitation of Hembercane for how dry it was.

"A master of the obvious you are," the sword snarked before I could, letting out smatterings of red lights like a glittery glow beneath the black metal's surface. "Yes, 'tis I, Enserric the Gray. I am, quite obviously, a bastard sword. And a rather nice one, as you can see. Not only am I shiny, I'm supremely sharp."

"I can see that," he observed. His eyes appeared to have lit up a bit at the sight of a shiny sword in the way mine would on an unbreakable nail file.

"Are you part of Halaster's decor?" I asked. "I have a few suggestions for him, if so."

The sword flashed bright red. "Nothing so fancy, I assure you," Enserric the longsword chimed. "No. I am, or was, an adventurer. That rather unfortunate looking pile of bones off to your left? That was me so long ago." I turned down to my feet and let my eyes crawl up a disheveled stack of bones near the base of the throne, with scraps of ancient fabric. I toed it with my boot, feeling a little sad for him. "This sword has a rather intense vampiric enchantment placed upon it that I was hit with shortly before my death, and my consciousness was transferred inside. It was some fifty years ago. I've been here ever since, sitting in the lap of a skeleton."

Deekin had approached us slowly after overhearing the conversation. "That sound very boring," he said. "Deekin feel sorry for you, and also wonders how you be counting the years trapped inside of a piece of metal. And hows you be talking right now, and also hows you not be insane from being alone so long in creepy death dungeon with creepy skeletons everywhere."

"And now I have the pity of a kobold," Enserric spat. "Wonderful. My eternal ennui is complete. Who's to say I'm not mad? I could very well be, for all I know."

"At least he's honest," I assessed. I turned to Solaufein. He had a peculiar gleam in his eye as he looked at the sword. "What are you thinking, Solly?"

He barely glanced at me. "First, never call me that again. Second, I am thinking that if we take this sword, this chamber will no longer contain sleeping kings."

Enserric paused before replying. "Well, er, yes. That is part of the problem. Chief Skull-dome here might not like it if you take his longsword. On the other hand, I'll be free and you can kill him! You seem like capable young adventurers. What do you say?"

"Hah!" I chuckled. "Chief Skull-dome. I like 'im. Let's keep it. We can take the bonesacks."

Solaufein smirked. "I think a talking longsword would be a liability. My mission requires stealth. We should be on our way." He turned away, and then Enserric started begging.

"Oh, please don't leave me here!" The sword's cries were strident. "I-I can be stealthy! Quiet as a mouse."

"Tell me about your enchantment, first," the drow commanded. "Does it work both ways?"

Enserric went quiet and still for a second. "Somewhat. It transfers the enemy's life energy to your own, a sort of vampiric regeneration. I think my body has a few other perks to it, but you'd need a wizard to tell you more. I used to be one, but no longer have access to my stores of magic. That seems to require a physical body, in the same way that a lich with no animus would only lay dormant in a phylactery."

"Deekin can probably figure it out," the kobold offered. Solaufein motioned him forward and the little bard bent down in front of the skeleton to examine Enserric more closely. "Hmm. Sword be right, there be a few enchantments. One to steal life, and one to keep it sharp, Deekin think, and one maybe to change its size. Could be shorter or longer, if you wants. Maybes more, but Deekin would need time to study for longer."

That gleam appeared in Solaufein's eyes again that I was starting to realize was a kind of gleeful anticipation. "Very well. Prepare a spell of invisibility. I am going to take Enserric, and then we will run for the next portal."

I headed right for the door that led to the next portal, hoping I could keep it open just in case it was spelled to close in the event of the kings' waking up. Deekin sang a little scratchy song, thankfully not using his cymbals which would wake up Pandemonium with its racket (along with the entire hall of skeletons prematurely), and before he was finished, Solaufein's nimble fingers pulled Enserric the longsword from the skeleton king's grasp.

Just as he did so, the sword's length shifted as it seemed to slide up into the hilt, becoming a regular longsword. Then the skeleton king's eye sockets began to glow, and it stood in its chair. I heard in my periphery the sounds of other bones clacking and weapons being drawn. Deekin's spell finished and the two of them disappeared into thin air. The skeleton seemed almost confused; I didn't need to know where they were since they knew to follow me, and trusted that they were close behind when I booked it to the next portal outside the next hall.

Before we knew it, we were free, and without getting a single hair damaged. I wasted no time in leading us to the next portal, which was barely five feet away from our own, and thankfully that one led us back to the main entrance.

This frustrated Solaufein, however. "You have led us in a circle!" He growled at me.

I frowned. "We'll circle back a few times, but we'll get there. Come on, the next one's barely up this way. I promise I've done this before. Try to trust me on this." He looked very frustrated with me and if I didn't know better, I'd say he pouted.

"Ah, what is the demon attempting? To cheat her way through Undermountain?" Enserric the Gray scoffed in Solaufein's hands. "That's not what those portals are for."

"You've been down here decades, stuck in the body of a sword! What do you know?" I snapped. "The method works, trust me."

"Trust a scheming cambion? My times have changed," he scoffed. "Then again, it is a drow who has rescued me, so perhaps I should be more blithe."

"Yes, you should," Solaufein nodded, "and you can repay me by keeping quiet for now, unless you have something constructive to add. No? Then let us hurry."

I hesitated only because he'd felt so queasy earlier, but figured he would tell me if something was wrong. It appeared he decided to take me at my word, which was a new one for me. With a spring in my step, I led us on to the next, and the next, and the next.

We flashed by dragons, by ogres, by fairies, and at one point startled a faun who was bathing by appearing in her room and abruptly running out. Deekin shouted an apology after us.

I don't know how many we went through, exactly. A few place I recognized, and some I did not. I was sure it would work, however, and I don't know exactly why I was sure. It was something that I couldn't explain, though I was certain our lack of progress was frustrating Solaufein. A few times we seemed to double back, and then skip forward. Once, we had to stop to regain our bearings as he began to feel nauseous again. There was something oddly endearing about the fact that his stomach couldn't handle extensive portal travel. He was a force of nature in battle, but show him another portal and he'd dry heave.

We did eventually make it into Halaster's lab. It was more a matter of the number of portals you used - from what little I understood, most were random, but some were specific. It was only a matter of time before you'd cross the right one. When we got there, I didn't know it was his lab at first - it was by complete accident I'd gotten there the first time, and the second time was only _slightly _more intentional. I didn't recognize the dark room we'd emerged in, but my nose picked up on the scent of rotting flesh approaching that alerted me to the presence of undead.

"Watch out!" I cried, and moved instinctively to the side only to find myself flush up against a stone wall. As an instinctive flare of wild energy balled up in my gut, a globe of darkness fell over all of our heads - I'd seen other drow cast the ability before and assumed it had been Solaufein. Everything became near-pitch and I had trouble making out even the slightest detail. I heard a warbled growl and cry, followed by him shouting - or swearing - in drow. The sound of a sword cutting through flesh and Enserric's crow of victory informed me the battle was over long before the darkness was dispelled by Deekin. Not that the faint light was much better than the dark . . .

That was when I realized that I'd forgotten all about Berger.

When the darkness faded, I was stunned by how quickly everything had just happened. First, we'd actually gotten to the lab; only about half of my ideas ever work, and usually not the way I intend them when they do. This had not been my intent, because second, Berger had locked himself inside the lab and had tried to protect it from us, the intruders, and attacked on instinct. Solaufein had assumed we were being attacked when I alerted him - I'd followed my nose before my brain, as usual, and hadn't even recognized the golem before the darkness globe had been cast. He'd been attacked by the flesh golem, who was probably defending itself from the invaders, or defending Halaster's goods.

I stepped up to examine the damage. Solaufein's adamantine chain hadn't been scratched, but his face had three rather large new wounds across it that he was nursing, in addition to the portal-induced headache when earned a few groans from him. Deekin was already fetching a potion. It looked like the golem had gotten in a lucky shot - why Solaufein never seemed to put on a helmet was beyond me, maybe it interfered with his eyesight or they didn't make them in drow sizes . . . Either way he was probably fine, but Berger's twitching body was emitting some kind of foul-smelling black blood and lay still at the drow's feet. When the golem's arm twitched out to violently grasp at air, Solaufein calmly cut its head off.

"This is a bloody disaster!" I announced, dodging the rolling head.

Once Solaufein was healed, he stood up full and stretched. "A warning would have been nice," he said snippily, after leveling me with a glare. He winced and sat back down, groaning and clutching his head.

I shook my head. "No," you don't understand, I wanted to say, you don't know what you've done. How to put this? "This is beyond a disaster. This is catastrophe. I'm so sorry, Solaufein, I should have reminded you or - I - this is bad. This is really, _very_ bad. That was Berger you just killed, Halaster's son!"

The drow blinked. "That was a flesh golem," he said slowly.

I shook my head again, a few more times. Maybe I was in disbelief? Hoo boy. "Halaster's going to be furious. If he's alive. If we free him. If . . . If is good. Or maybe if he's still captured, we could kill him before he kills you . . ."

Solaufein seemed genuinely confused. "It attacked me, so I killed it."

I slapped myself on the horns in exasperation. "Don't you remember? The ogre talked about him! And I did. A little. Berger isn't the mad wizard's literal son, he's a golem that Halaster created to be his son. He was kind of stupid, honestly. Annoying, but mostly harmless. So, maybe it's not the worst thing for him that he's dead; who knows what Halaster's going to do when we find him now! Best not mention this," I warned. "And that's only if he's alive when we find him."

Solaufein reconsidered the flesh golem's corpse, and toed it with his boot. "It is a _flesh golem,_" he repeated slowly.

"What Blackcloak do if he find out Boss killed his, um, flesh golem son?" Deekin wondered.

I shuddered to think. "What you're failing to really understand about this place is that Halaster is Undermountain. It's not just his laboratory, or his pet project . . . How long do you remember being down here?" Solaufein thought about this and seemed consternated when he couldn't answer immediately. "I guarantee it's only been an hour or two on the surface. I was gone but a month or two, and it felt as if years passed. Everything is different down here, something about the wild magic in it. I don't know, but Halaster probably already knows what happened. He might be dead or imprisoned, but the fact that the drow couldn't get back to this level means he must be alive enough to maintain some kind of control.. He sees everything that happens inside. If he's alive, he probably already knows what happened in here. This place is nothing more a dark reflection of his own crazed imagination."

"I defended myself," Solaufein insisted firmly. "It attacked me! What was I supposed to do?"

"Halaster won't see it that way," I warned. "Just . . . Don't mention it if we find him. And if he brings it up, stick to that. Maybe he'll be lenient. Don't count on it. You might end up spending the rest of your days as a rat, or a pile of soot."

Enserric glowed from the black sword's depths. "Ah, in that case, would one of you be kind enough to take me out of this wretched dungeon in my wielder's place? I should hate to be in the possession of some soot. To be rescued only to get stuck back with those sacks of bones again by the mad wizard would be tortuous, although it would be a slice of thematic irony."

"I'll think about it," I promised.

Solaufein stared at the flesh golem's body for a little while before moving to search for a way out with the rest of us. He pointed out a way down for us and Deekin was able to de-trap and pick the lock on the door. "I still can't believe you killed Berger," I was repeating in disbelief as we descended into the third level. The drow didn't even bother to glare at me, he just kept walking straight ahead. I couldn't deny a thrill at the idea of getting farther into the dungeon. It felt as though we were really making progress . . . Something that I was sure, in my bones, would be halted by something terrible. I was sure of it. There would be umber hulks around the corner any minute. The further down you went, the worse it got. Durnan had warned me of such the first time I attempted the descent. I didn't know if we'd encounter the rakshasa, but it was possible that we'd circumvented them. I hoped so.

* * *

PT 2: SOLAUFEIN

"I hear . . ." Solaufein stared up at the stones on the ceiling as if there was some hidden writing there that might reveal his own thoughts to him. "Ah, what is the word for a word that is a noise?"

Binne's brow scrunched, stretching the gold piercings around the corners of her eyes. "What _kind _of noise?"

He touched his tongue to palate. "It is like that, but quieter. And many."

She seemed even more confused and looked to Deekin for clarification. "Are their chickens down there?" She wondered incredulously. "I mean, now that I think about it, that does seem like something Halaster would do - guard his lower levels with killer chickens."

It was Solaufein's turn to be confused. "What is a chicken? No, it is," he repeated the noise a few times rapidly. "Fainter, and soft. Sharper than taps. I would think it is either the faint sounds of mining, or a hook horror."

"Oooh. What be hook horror?" Deekin asked with a gleam in his eye. "But Deekin pretty sure it not be mining. Mining usually done by dwarves and dwarves all kicked out of Undermountain when Halaster roost here."

He didn't have the time to try and figure out how to explain what a hook horror was to a surfacer. "I will describe one to you later."

Binne looked down at the kobold with wide eyes. "You don't think there really are killer chickens, do you? That'd be terrifying. Oh wait, word that's a noise!" Binne's eyes lit up. "Those are onomatopoeia's. Like 'click' or 'clap' or 'hogswoggler!'" Deekin started scratching in his notes.

". . . Yes, I hear clicking ahead," he warned them after struggling to remember what an onomatopoeia was after giving up on figuring out 'hogswoggler.' His Common had improved by leaps and bounds since he'd left Ust'Natha, which is why he often found himself at a loss for words when Binne opened her mouth. Clearly, Common was also not the warlock's mother tongue. That was the only explanation he'd been able to conjure with for the bastardizations of language that emerged frequently from her.

"What is it?" Deekin scratched quietly.

"Not dwarves," was all Solaufein could say for certain and disappeared into the shadows to find more. The tunnels felt more and more like home to him, the longer he spent in them. He wasn't sure if he should worry about that or not, but if Eilistraee truly had a purpose for him here, he could only assume that she was also guiding his steps. He stuck close to the walls and wished for a moment he could find a way to transform that warlock wall-climbing trick into a cloak or a pair of gloves, so he might tunnel-walk.

As Solaufein was fantasizing about outrunning a dhaerow patrol on z'orr tizzin while he donned a spider-cloak and his new boots of haste, he heard the sounds of a trickle of water ahead. It stopped him in his tracks and from behind he could hear the warlock grumble, "why's 'e got to be all mysterious?" A part of him was possessed with the violent urge to run back and throttle her, and then teach her the proper meaning of stealth - or at the very least get Deekin to spell her into silence, but the kobold's reply earned an involuntary chuckle out of him.

"Boss always be a little dramatic," the kobold confided, his voice more or less at the same level. "Deekin think it be an elf thing, they all kinda be like that. Boss be a little better than most about it. Heart be in the right place." The dark elf snorted at Deekin's vote of confidence and crept ahead and found a dug in trench running with water. The marks on the ground struck a chord of familiarity from his past. He felt like he could smell blood and clay, and remembered a peculiar tapping that echoed through the tunnels beneath the Anauroch . . .

The conversation faded further and further as he went ahead, only to meet a dead end. " . . . Was she mean. E's an alright sort, though. Where'd you first meet?"

"That be a good story!" Deekin proceeded to tell a rather summarized series of events of their first encounter, and as Solaufein's eyes scanned in the heat spectrum to find purchase he heard Deekin stop short near the end of his tale at the mention of Drogan. Though the dwarf was long since gone, a part of him was a little touched that Deekin held the old wizard in any fondness; they hadn't exactly met on the best terms, or known each other for long. Solaufein still missed the grumpy old dwarf whenever he thought of him, but the thought did not hurt.

He examined a cool spot closely on the wall and detected a hidden passage, clearly man-made. He curiously pressed in with his fingers and heard a faint click and scrape of stone. Part of the wall moved in and slid away into itself and revealed a metal door with a lock he couldn't break without causing an abominable amount of noise that would defeat his entire goal. In the background, he heard Binne change the subject and ask after Deekin's old master.

It didn't take him long to get back, just as the kobold had finished explaining that Tymofarrar had inspired him to be a bard by commanding him to learn magic and tell stories for the white dragon's amusement. "I could hear you at the other end of the cavern," he told to the cross-legged warlock. "You really do not do understand what 'stealth' means."

She smiled disarmingly. "Not at all!" She chirped and stood up in one fluid motion. "Father always said that the best possible defense was to be as offensive as possible, but that's an Uthgardt for you."

One of Solaufein's eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "You have led a strange life," he observed. "And this explains much about you. Now be silent as we approach."

They were more or less quiet on the way to the door. Deekin immediately started trying to unlock the door and pulled out a set of tools from his pack. He leaned against the wall and waited while the cambion female twirled her staff in her hands. He watched carefully as she inevitably fumbled and dropped it, reaching forward with panicked eyes trying to keep it from the ground. He put out his foot and caught the staff on his boot before it hit the ground and kicked it back to her. In the light-less cavern, he could see with his heat vision a flush traveling up her face. "You can stop fidgeting any time," he informed her politely, and she nodded quickly, holding even her tail still.

Deekin finally opened the door with a click and a satisfied hum, and the door swung inward on thankfully well-oiled hinges. He stepped into the door first with his sword drawn and told them both to stay and be quiet, and had Deekin hand him an invisibility potion so he could scout ahead. The clicking had grown louder from the southern part of the passage, but to the north he heard nothing. Certain now that the sound was Formians and possessed of no desire to fight them, he waited until the clicking grew fainter, meaning a patrol must have just passed into adjoining corridor. He hissed for his companions to follow and they made their way north through the winding tunnel until he finally saw a door that was emitting a small amount of heat.

Once more the kobold nodded and stepped up while the warlock stepped back a bit. He remembered the fire trap in the upper dungeon and smiled, knowing she couldn't see it. He'd never met someone so prone to little misfortunes, as if Beshaba had smiled on her birth. The potion wore off by the time Deekin de-fanged the flame trap on the door and managed to open it. "Deekin hear clicking too, and think it be ant-people," the kobold said aloud in a thin scratch. There was no real risk of the enemy overhearing at this point.

Solaufein made an affirmative noise. "I don't want to know," the warlock decided with a head-shake.

The door led down to the next level, and a part of Solaufein felt suspicious that they had made it through so far without any battles or injuries. He was anticipating danger long before he heard the patrol ahead, and practically plastered both of his companions to the wall with his arms to keep them still and quiet. The inconvenience of being unable to convey silent information with finger signing frustrated him, and made him determine that he would soon have to sit the warlock and the bard down and teach them.

He ambled a little far ahead on silent feet and crouched beneath an outcropping of stone to listen. Ahead, he detected two males, one with a crossbow and the other with a longsword and dagger drawn. Their postures were casual and their strides wide and careless; it was apparent that they were not expecting trouble, and were overconfident that they could easily dispatch any that came their way. He estimated his chances at killing both of them without one of them warning the others that he heard milling about in the far cavern as minimal, and kept his distance.

The two males were laughing softly at something he only half-heard as they approached. From somewhere behind them, he could hear the rapid clap of plate boots on the ground, and the two patrolmen stopped and held still. "You two! Males!" A dhaerow female barked out in Ilythiiri. "You are needed in the lower cavern. Relieve the guards of the insect."

They barked back an uneasy affirmative and the female trounced away. The male muttered something about whips and ambled their way back to their camp. Solaufein crept back to his companions and briefed them on the situation.

"Ambush 'em," Binne supplied with a shrug once he asked for suggestions.

"Deekin could summon bear again," the kobold offered. "Maybe have the scrolls for a few elementals. Ooh! And wand of cloudkill. Deekin wanted to save that in case we ran into umber hulks, but they not be very expensive. D'jinn man might have more for sale."

"I've got a few demons up me sleeves, and a few more up me new trouser-legs," the warlock offered and looked down to the kobold. "I don't have any d'jinns, though. That's a fair sized patrol with just the summons, innit?"

Deekin cleared his throat. "How many drow there be, Boss thinks?"

Solaufein estimated in his head. "Standard war-band is nine. I would plan for at least eleven, some with lizard-mounts."

The warlock blinked her amber eyes slowly. "They have pet lizards that they ride? Like . . . cave horses?"

He nodded. "Similar. They walk on any surface as a spider would. The dhaerow ahead have plentiful supplies and are well-entrenched. They are also holding hostages."

They all thought about this for a little while. It was eventually decided that Solaufein would sneak past with an invisibility potion and the piwafwi to hide his body and temperature, while Deekin would blind them with a solar ray and he and the cambion would summon minions to target the spell-casters and keep them from firing anything significant off. Deekin would work on distracting the remaining forces and Binne would try to target any priestesses. She hit Solaufein with her Spider-Walk spell, and he couldn't deny a gleeful part of him greatly enjoyed running above the entire encampment while none of them were the least bit aware.

The distraction hit just as he sneaked past a herd of peaceful rothe. At the end of the long cavern was a rather well-guarded Formian prisoner held in an imprisonment spell. Solaufein assessed the enemy. Two warriors, a bolt-man, and a wizard. The wizard likely held the key to the spell, or it would end with his death. The dark elf decided; drew Enserric in one hand and threw a dagger with another that flew unerringly at the wizard's throat.

He dropped down in front of the startled others; though they were startled, they were still well-trained and reacted quickly. The weapon master (he'd had to reassess) he'd swung Enserric at parried the blow easily and lunged low. Solaufein had to step back, which in boots of speed was really a leap, and targeted the one with the crossbow. He managed to damage the dark elf's weapon by slicing the string, causing a backlash that wounded the bolt-man in the eye and downed him momentarily. The weapon master was close behind and put Solaufein momentarily on the defensive until his experience (or luck) won out and allowed him to pierce his sword through the weapon master's side, catching him by surprise with the death blow. "Ah, drow blood! So piquant!" Enserric crowed, unnecessarily, as Solaufein swung him at the next enemy.

"I should have left you with the liches," Solaufein half-heartedly threatened, drawing his sentient sword through the next swordsman, and finally moving to behead the one with the broken crossbow.

His sword cut quickly down and beheaded the half-blind enemy. "Wielder!" Enserric the Gray mocked. "You wound me. I thought we were becoming friends."

"You are my weapon, and we are not friends," he muttered and walked towards the imprisoned Formian. Enserric huffed.

A buzzing noise slithered through his mind like a fly near the shell of his ear._ *__Friend/Foe__*_ was the thought that entered his awareness with it, but it felt like a question. It also struck him with a protective feeling, and one of mistrust. He looked up to the Formian, whom he now saw was held to the ground by a series of chains that wrapped around its body. She had characteristics the others did not, and was much larger than the average - most likely a Queen, he deduced, kept captive so the dhaerow might be able to walk amongst them unmolested. He sheathed his sword, sensing no more danger. "How do I free you?" He asked her aloud.

She seemed relieved and clicked involuntarily. _*__Drow/Magic/Hand/Lever/Glow__*_ \- the words spliced through with the images of the Formian's memories of the dhaerow wizard who had held her captive and killed many of her people, enslaving them against their wills. A feeling of regret and violation accompanied the memories. He was unbothered at the thought of her rifling through his mind in the same way; he had nothing to hide in there. Nearby he found a lever, just out of the Queen's reach, and it took some effort to move. The chains slithered away with a clank, perplexing him as to how long these dark elves had been trapped there in the time-warp that was Undermountain, that they had constructed such an elaborate imprisonment system. The queen tentatively stepped out of the circle once she was freed, and then stepped further with relief when she realized the glow of the magic was gone.

"Will you tell your people not to attack mine?" He asked, not wanting another disaster like the one over the dead Bedine guide to happen. The images and sensations of his memories, along with the mental images of his two companions entered his mind, and he knew the Queen picked up on it from the twitching of her mandibles.

*_Safe/Travel/Friend/Warn/Victory/Return_* It seemed a kind of telepathic goodbye, with images of warm cocoons and nectar and a feeling of harmony - but soon enough the queen had disappeared through a side passage he hadn't even realized was there and stared after with wide eyes, as two Formians dug up through the ground and the queen descended into the hole. He stared only for a moment at the bizarre sight before running toward the sounds of continuing battle.

In the thick of it, at least seven different Deekins of varying translucency and color were running about raising hell and creating magical distractions. He couldn't see the bard, most likely spelled himself back into Invisibility to stay out of the line of fire of the warriors with crossbows that were freely firing poison bolts wildly into the fray. A fire elemental and a large air were keeping a group of them occupied and keeping one priestess distracted. Another diviner uttered an incantation and pointed at Binne in a spell that must have backfired or unaffected her, for all it did was make the cambion's tail twitch before she hurled an entropic bolt right at the priestess' head. It almost hit Solaufein who was some distance behind her when she dodged it, so rather than wait he ran forward and speared the dark elven woman through the chest from behind as she attempted to dodge the bolt.

"Watch your aim," he suggested to Binne as he let the priestess fall off of his blade. He ran for the nearest wall before he could hear her reply and slipped behind a few archers, only half-hearing what she shouted after him.

That was the last thing he remembered in that cavern.

There was no pain, just darkness that washed over him when he inevitably slipped into reverie. He kept seeing a woman's face - of his race with eyes the color of a robin's egg. Memories flashed by like fireflies and were swiftly forgotten upon waking.

When he came to, he felt a great pain in his head and became first aware of the fact that his hands were bound behind him, then that he was sitting up right, and then that he and the cambion were bound together back-to-back with silken rope and had several weapons pointed at him by the enemy patrol that had ambushed them. His senses took in his surroundings, and he knew that they had not been moved far, nor did he experience the disconcerting feeling of lost time. He decided that he most likely had been knocked out by brute force and caught unawares, and cursed under his breath at his own recklessness.

His eyes sought out a commanding officer. A female in red chain and dark plate-mail stood closest to him, with an eager robed spell-slinger at her side. She stared down contemptuously at the both of them, assessing him just as he was assessing her. His hands clenched and flexed. "Ah already tried that," Binne said from behind him with a morbid cheer. Her voice vibrated through both of them. "Can't reach 'em with me claws without hurting the both o' us. You sods are as good with your knots as sailors. You'd make great pirates. Ever thought of a career change?" She was addressing their captors, but none of them responded to her.

His eyes never left the female. She was the most dangerous. She was the one with the most intelligent, assessing gaze as compared to the mindless hatred of the others. "Your companions will die before you do," the red woman promised him in a light voice in their mother tongue. As before with the scouts, he experienced an odd nostalgia at the sound of familiar words from a stranger's voice. Her hand strayed near the whip at her hip, but not a serpentine one that he expected. It was a single rope. "If you try to escape in any way, or do anything that I do not tell you to do, they will suffer immensely. I think you understand this now."

His eyes sought out Enserric, and saw his own sword resting on the female's hip. His disgust at the sight was unmistakable. In Common more to irritate his fellows than for Binne or Deekin's benefit, he spat out, "I do not take commands from a spider-whore that even Lloth has abandoned."

Antagonizing females was something of a talent of his. He'd had many years to hone this skill against Phaere and others. The priestess' whip was around his throat within the next blink. Though he struggled to breathe, there was a certain satisfaction to the feeling. Behind him, he heard the cambion cry out, "Oi, hey, you didn't tell him not to call you a spider-whore, now did you?!" She seemed genuinely upset, as if she didn't understand that they couldn't kill him if they wanted him alive. He would've lectured her if he could breathe. "Now that's your own bloody fault for not being specific enough! 'Sides, y-you can't expect him to—"

"I specifically commanded you to be silent!" The priestess screeched, still in Ilythiiri. Her whip left Solaufein's neck and cracked against a part of the girl behind him that he couldn't see. Though he did not regret his remark, he regretted her defense of it. She'd brought it on herself, though. The choking sounds and labored breaths did alarm him, and he thought of any way he could rectify the situation without causing more harm to the both of them.

"Your slaves are incredibly obstinate," the wizard standing next to the priestess informed Solaufein. He spoke casually, even confidentially, which seemed to irritate the female greatly. Great must have been his power also, for she did not back-hand the wizard immediately after he opened his mouth without being addressed. The wizard pointed at the gurgling cambion. "That one mouthed off considerably before we figured out that all we had to do was whip the kobold to keep her silent," he went on. It was decades of discipline that let Solaufein contain his rage at hearing this.

"You have nothing to fear from her. If I find out that you have hurt that kobold, I will the one to break you," Solaufein promised to anyone within ear shot. "All she will probably do is watch and criticize my technique." Binne started giving out a choked, garbled laugh that sounded painful but warmly amused him. It was relieving that even such circumstance, they could still bring out the humor in one another. He doubted he'd ever find another abbin of her like.

The priestess grabbed Solaufein's attention by bending down to his level and literally seizing his hair to tilt his head so she might gaze in his eyes. The whip eased off of Binne's neck and he felt himself shift backward as the cambion took deep breaths that inadvertently tightened the ropes around both of them. The priestess' glare tried to bore its way into him, but it found a wall within him that could not be surmounted. She did not seem to like what she saw, and there was a resignation in her that seemed out of place on one of Lloth's. "Then it is lucky for you that he is still alive," the priestess hissed. "If keeping them will warrant your meek compliance, then you will be responsible for them. Any actions they take will be used upon you, just as anything you do wrong they will be punished for. Another obstinate word out of the demoness' mouth, and I will strip it from your hide. If you cannot keep your cattle in line, then we will kill them. Do you understand, male?"

She was impersonal about it, at least. Despite invading his personal space, there was no real malice behind the female's voice. Only a resolve, hardened by a weary edge. All the priestesses he had met were eager to punish, even took joy in it. It was clear she took no joy in her work any longer, and had grown weary of it. How long they had been down there away from their overseers he did not know, but he felt satisfied that at least their company suffered many losses before they overcame him. "We will comply," he said in clear and loud Common, for Binne's benefit.

The female stepped back with satisfaction written on her face and ordered that they be untied.

He and Binne were then separated. They were stripped of all of their gear, though apparently it didn't occur to them to take his boots. He counted that as a small grace, though wondered if it had something to do with the relic he kept in there. Using it would be too dangerous with no guarantee that he could take the others with him, and would defeat the point of freeing themselves as it would alert the priestess to the artifact's existence. It seemed to him they had no choice but to continue where the patrol would lead them, and wait for the right moment.

Immediately upon being separated, they were marched by a few swordsmen and seated while the rest of the group seemed to be breaking down a makeshift camp for travel. A crossbow and drawn sword were kept near their throats at all times. It was hours of silence before the priestess returned and commanded them to follow her at the head of the group, while a few scouts on mounts traveled a ways ahead to ascertain dangers.

The cambion was fairly mute after she tried to goad the priestess again during this sedate march, and the entire party was stopped so that Solaufein could be whipped. He was stripped of armor and held on his knees, and did not bother to display any signs of protest. He took the punishment without flinching or a word of complaint, but he saw that Binne flinched with each strike. Her tail betrayed her, always, although her face was impassive. The priestess was insistent that she watch the consequences of her behavior, and she didn't cry, which he was grateful for - he'd seen her cry before and had been very unsure of what to do at the time. Crying wasn't something he'd been fortunate enough to witness often in his life. Uniquely, it struck him as a very human thing for Binne to do; feeling the pain of another being was considered a mental illness punishable by transformation into a drider amongst his people. The irony of that amused him and kept him through the pain in his back while they marched further into the tunnels, now looking more and more like old duergar or svirfneblin mines.

The priestess didn't bother healing him until a day later, and he didn't complain. He even said thank you, which irritated her and amused him.

The warlock hadn't liked what he'd translated of the priestess' words to her, in a rare moment where they were all allowed to eat and sit next to one another under guard. Deekin, he saw, was bound and kept still by only one bored looking crossbowman most of the time. He didn't know how they'd injured the kobold, but he swore to take it out on their captors tenfold if they had. He prayed to Eilistraee that they would not get bored and try to eat Deekin.

Their captors rarely spoke to them, and indeed rarely spoke with one another. The atmosphere was tense and even the commander seemed affected; she was not so much ill-tempered as accustomed to authority, and saw hesitation as disobedience. There were about fifteen in the entire company that had been waiting as back-up for the force they'd overwhelmed. Solaufein felt foolish for jumping in, wondering if freeing the Formian Queen was even worth it. He didn't have much time to police his conscience, however. The priestess marched them and was stern on any infraction.

She unbound him completely to his frustration and blatantly kept his sword on full view after the first few days or so. Time began to blur, and he was reminded of Binne's words back in the lava-chamber he'd found her in, about time 'running' in Undermountain. It distracted him from fantasizing about ways to kill the priestess. Her hand never strayed to his sword, preferring the whip. He was kept within close eyes of the wizard at all times. Binne and Deekin were kept separated from him while they traveled, a little away from the group. They were allowed small meal breaks, and given water sparingly.

For days they traveled, resting for no more than four hours a time before marching on. He was no longer certain that they were in Undermountain at all, and not in the Underdark as the passages grew darker. Occasionally they would stop and always send scouts on z'orr tizzin.

The wizard had also developed some manner of unnatural interest in him and kept trying to goad him into conversation. The attempts grew increasingly uncomfortable and escalated into Solaufein enduring the wizard's advances before finally the priestess had to shout at him to shut up, which seemed to momentarily phase the spell-caster. He didn't know the wizard's name and had no desire to; he simply ignored the man and remained aloof, knowing that this at least was something he could control. The warlock took it upon herself to start goading the wizard rather than the priestess, which the commander didn't seem to mind. Perhaps it was the language barrier; neither her nor the wizard seemed to speak any Common. It seemed to work at distracting the spell-caster, which was a bit of a relief for Solaufein.

He hadn't had a moment to himself at all and time continued to run away from them. Between the brutal pace they had set, the limited rest, and the endless punishments, his mind drifted. He was satisfied that his captors seemed only slightly less weary than he. If he slept, or pissed, or shat, or ate, someone seemed to always be there at all times to make sure he didn't do anything threatening. He suspected that they were trying to break him in some way; it didn't really bother him to be observed in intimate moments, but it made any attempts at escape inconvenient.

At meal time, he saw a moment when Deekin was sat next to him by his guard. The kobold looked tired and had a few bruises that seemed to be healing - and smelled a little of fear, but it seemed to dissipate when he sat next to Solaufein. "Hi, Boss," he scratched quietly, almost brokenly.

Solaufein feigned pain and reached into his boot. "Hold on. There is a rock in my boot." His guard hadn't even glanced at him, both of them clearly having better things to do than guard the hostages. He pulled out the tiny stone and tossed it into Deekin's lap. The kobold's eyes widened, but he otherwise betrayed nothing. Deekin, to Solaufein's chagrin, immediately decided to hide it in his mouth. It wasn't ideal and wasn't the place Solaufein would have chosen, and it made him grimace. At least it was hidden, he decided, and he knew that Deekin knew well how to activate it in the event of an absolutely life-threatening emergency. No matter who activated it, it would only transport Solaufein (or anyone touching him and/or the relic, so Deekin in this case), but it had its advantages. They'd used it on occasion when in desperate need of a place to rest in Undermountain, or to store items they'd otherwise not desire to carry, since the Reaper didn't seem to mind anything much. If the kobold could activate it, he would be able to find a stock of healing potions there, at the very least. Deekin had even managed to teach the creature how to play checkers one evening.

He just prayed the little bard didn't decide to swallow the relic. Then they'd be well and truly fucked, as Binne would say. An unpleasant mental image came to mind when he thought of the commander's pet wizard that seemed to have taken to giving him longing looks whenever possible.

WIELDER! A voice pierced through Solaufein's thoughts with enough force that it made him visibly wince. Oh, sorry. Hopefully that's better. Ahem!

They had been marching for three days. They used their lizards exclusively for scouting ahead, so their progress was slow. The priestess was ahead and he'd been watching her carefully since the only other thing to stare at was rock, or the wizard that was creepily staring at him. The sword at her hip had his attention suddenly as he recognized the voice as belonging to Enserric. Yes! The voice confirmed. Don't say anything. I can hear you. Been trying to figure out how to reach you for a while now. Wait, how long's it been? Nevermind that. Solaufein couldn't help but wonder at the sword's array of abilities. It stole life and bestowed it to the wielder, had an entire personality, was permanently sharp, and now apparently telepathic. Yes, that's fairly new to me as well, but I think it's because you're my wielder and you picked me up after my old one died. Not entirely sure. Anyway, just wanted to alert you that we're being followed.

Subtly he felt his gaze turn behind him, only to unfortunately meet the eyes of the wizard. He shuddered. I can sense them, not sure just how yet, but I'm sure they're there. When they attack, if they do, please don't leave me with this heinous woman. That's all I can ask. Her mind is hideous. Solaufein wondered how his mind compared. Well yours is quite terrible too, but in a good way. Or at least a productive way, and besides, we have fun killing together, don't we?

The sword had a strange idea of fun. Solaufein was a little paranoid after that, but schooled his feelings carefully so as to betray nothing to their captors. He dared not tell the warlock because he knew within a second of meeting her the first time that she was utterly incapable of lying, but managed to whisper to Deekin to 'wait' in a way that sounded enough like a light cough that no one was the wiser. He hoped the kobold understood that he wasn't to use the relic quite yet. Deekin wasn't always the best on picking up subtleties, but he'd gotten much better since the days of their first meeting in the dilapidated shop near Hilltop.

It was hours before the slog stopped. He felt wearier than he normally did, most likely due to the lack of nutrition, and noted that the commander was the only one who appeared to be unruffled. An effect of a spell, no doubt. He had one such that would give him surpassing strength for a time, but had to wait to use it til the right occasion - when poisoned bolts weren't pointed at his allies. In a cavern that was potentially days and days away from their initial entrance into Underdark from the mad dungeon, they were placed down and had all of their hands bound again.

"Ah, there you are," said an uncomfortably familiar voice in Ilythiiri. Solaufein did not turn his head to acknowledge his captor; the wizard was alone this time, as was he. His guard was nowhere to be seen, and they were a ways away from the others. It wasn't possible for Solaufein to be unnerved - that weakness had been removed from him as a child - no, he was only annoyed. The wizard annoyed him a lot. "Must I enchant you to get your attention? Or shall I borrow Akordia's whip? You were so entertaining after we punished the demon." The snide voice continued from somewhere over his left shoulder.

Solaufein was unable to suppress a sigh at his own ill fortune, and felt justifiably livid when he recalled the incident that the wizard had referred to. The wizard had attempted to touch him before, and Solaufein had reacted by head-butting him in the nose. His unorthodox punishment for defiance and hurting the creep once the priestess divined the nature of the assault was to be sodomy - taken out on the defiant cambion while Solaufein would be forced to witness. She had promised that any of his infractions would be taken out upon his abbin, and vice versa. The priestess he now knew to be named Akordia had held Solaufein's head back by his hair and placed Enserric against his neck while one of her swordsmen raped Binne Ofgren a few feet in front of him.

She had started clawing at her attacker as soon as she could, and was restrained, pacified only a little when they threatened to cut off her tail. Then she'd started criticizing her rapist's technique with very colorful language, which had caused Solaufein to inadvertently let out a startled laugh that had also been taken out on her as punishment in the form of a gag and six lashes after the whole thing was over. She'd been quiet for a while after that and had remained so until recently, although it pleased him that she still goaded anyone who man-handled her whenever she could. Whenever she did, it was Solaufein who was punished. He had taken the abuse gladly, complaining that they couldn't take care of the itch on his back each time.

At the moment as the wizard approached, he distantly recalled a conversation with Viconia De'Vir en route to Athkatla about human sexuality. Both of the Underdark natives found people on the surface to be very peculiar; consent was defined, in his society, as a matter for females to decide for themselves. They selected whomever they chose. They did not care what males did on their own, and it was fairly normal for men at arms to seek release with one another. Only amongst allies that you could at least trust as far as you could throw them. Certainly not amongst captives. Those who lay with slaves (rothe) or captives were deemed too pathetic or too ugly to secure their desires elsewhere. It was not uncommon as a punishment however, but considered himself fortunate that the commander was only creative, not bloodthirsty. He also wasn't sure if he should consider it a compliment or grave insult that this wizard had gone very far out of his way to arrange an alone moment with his favored captive. He was grateful, in a way, because finally the wizard had allowed himself to be alone with Solaufein, giving him the perfect time to strike.

"You disgrace yourself," Solaufein finally said after forcing his admirer to endure a moment of uncomfortable silence. This time, he did look at the wizard because he wanted to see the expression on his face, and he was rewarded with a seething rage that made him chuckle. It was the same words that the commander in red had dryly said in reprimand to the wizard not a day earlier, after the wizard had responded to one of Binne's goading comments literally explosively. "Xa'huuli jaluk," he added, and actually grinned when the spell-caster flushed in anger.

"Remember whose mercy you are at now," the wizard seethed, and grabbed Solaufein's hair to yank his head back. He allowed the touch and prayed the wizard would lean in just a little bit closer . . .

Solaufein's ear twitched as he heard a distant scuttle from the wrong end of the cavern. Enserric's warning sprang to his mind; the wizard had heard the same noise, possessed of the same hearing, and began to mutter another spell under his breath. Solaufein's hands remained bound to his chagrin, so - out of options - he leapt up from his position and head-butted the wizard in the nose again.

He felt like the idiot deserved it after trying the same thing twice, and grinned as the robed dhaerow cried out in pain as blood streamed from his face. Before he could shout an alarm, the warrior was on top of him with hands clenched around the other male's throat. "Why is it always wizards?" he snorted derisively in Ilythiiri as the male fled into unconsciousness with some struggle; he'd let his guard down for the second time in his arrogance and suffered the result. Anyone this helpless and malicious wouldn't survive long in the Underdark anyway.

Solaufein maintained his grip and cocked his head to listen closely to the sounds of crossbows letting loose and swords being drawn behind him in the cavern. No one seemed to have noticed what was going on with the mage, at least, because a battle had begun and someone had discovered their fellows dead and raised an alarm. Whatever had been following them had chosen the ideal moment to attack. His white-knuckled grip eventually resulted in the a cracking noise from the wizard's throat, snapping the bone and causing it to pierce the man's windpipe. The male abruptly came back into consciousness only to slowly asphyxiate to death on his own blood. Solaufein, feeling relieved, calmly stood up and rifled through the flailing spell-caster's clothes for something to cut his ropes with.

He discovered a boot-knife and began severing his silken bonds, thankful that the blade was adamantine and could cut through the spider-silk with some struggle. He heard a distant cry that sounded like Deekin's voice, and an enraged shout in an abyssal tongue from the warlock just as he worked at least one of his hands free. Finally, he ran along the edge of the cavern with the knife and assessed the situation.

The party of fifteen had been reduced to eleven - three scouts lay dead with their throats slit. Who was on whose side was a little harder to determine, since the attacks appeared to also be perpetrated by dark elves. His friend Deekin, he could find no trace of. He focused on finding his allies and sensed, rather than saw, the warlock battling the priestess to the north. The entropic energy was unmistakable and typically ran over his mind like a cold feather. The priestess, Akordia, was chanting over the din of the battle just as a flaming column flew out of her hands and nailed one of the attacking dark elves in the chest, sending a black-cloaked and black-armored female out of an invisibility spell mid-flight and hitting a spot on the floor near the concealed and rather startled Solaufein.

The one who was struck was a female of lithe build in armor that seemed to shelter her from both spectrums. Solaufein barely had time to duck as she was sent flying by the spell and slammed into the cavern wall, winded and injured, but certainly not dead. Solaufein, feeling like it was the right thing to do, knelt next to the woman and turned her over. She winced in pain and did not seem to see him. He spared but a moment to heal her wounds before apologizing and dropping a globe of darkness over them both. The female cried out his own name to him, "Solaufein, Nau!" which startled him again (he wasn't exactly famous amongst his people) but did not stop him from making a beeline toward the red-plated commander. He knew that she had Enserric, and she'd been the one holding Enserric to his neck while they'd violated his undeserving friend in front of him, so she was the primary target. She would die in pain if he had any say in it.

When he exited the globe he used the haste enchantment on his boots to his full advantage. At least seven warriors, including the female he had healed were attacking the dhaerow party, along with an earth elemental and familiar dire wolf that he assumed was at Deekin's command since the priestess was busy. The bard was still nowhere to be seen, however, perhaps having already spelled himself into invisibility. He was vaguely disappointed that Deekin had either chosen not to or been unable to activate the relic, but it would hardly be a good time now in the thick of battle. Binne, on the other hand, didn't know how to be invisible or didn't seem to care and was throwing spear after spear made of seething, cold necrotic energy at the priestess, whose spelled armor seemed to protect her. It was enough to distract the priestess from further spell-casting, but the action left the lone warlock completely open to attacks from behind.

He darted around the combat between his captors and the enemy dhaerow and saw a swordsman try one such attack and threw his dagger at the offender, nailing the male right in the chest. Upon examining the male's face when he leapt forward and kicked the knife and driving it further in, he realized this had been the male that had been instructed to violate Binne, and he was pleased with himself for the kill. He reached quickly down to rip the dagger out and sliced through the throat. An arterial spray coated him in blood and alerted the warlock to his presence, though she did not cease in her attack. "It's a good day to die, innit?" Binne chirped, and let out a grunt of effort as she tried to form her energy into a whip and sent it at the enraged Akordia. It lashed back and forth, driving the priestess back, but not harming her to the cambion's great frustration.

"Let us switch," he suggested, and they changed positions as he faced the priestess down. A spell let loose from the warlock's arsenal and collided with two crossbow men who began to clutch their heads and scream in fear or agony, it wasn't certain. The distraction earned them swift deaths by crushing from the nearby elemental.

The priestess in red, Akordia, glared at him and lowered her shield and whip. "Jaluk," she hissed. "Og'elend ulu udossta dazzan!" Was her battle cry before she leapt forward with Enserric in her hands.

"Hey!" The sword cried out. "That's Solaufein, my wielder, you ridiculous woman!" He dodged a rather slow and lazy strike from the priestess and, more to irritate than injure her, kicked at the back of her knee. Enserric seemed to be doing his best to make the fight difficult and lengthened himself, making himself a great deal heavier than the priestess was used to, to her frustration. Solaufein's knee-blow struck but did not fell her and only increased her rage. "Don't you know the first thing about vampiric swords? They don't work on their bound wielders! You know you'll only hurt yourself with your ignorance, you daft bint!" The sword went on in a lecturing tone.

She glared down at the weapon in her hands and kept swinging at Solaufein who easily dodged. Finally she abandoned her shield and tossed it to the ground, switching the talkative sword to her off hand and grabbed her whip. Enserric kept lecturing her the entire time and started cursing her in several different languages. She pretended well that it did not bother her, but her impatience had begun to make her movements predictable. Each time she attempted to go for the kill and missed him completely.

Solaufein anticipated her move for it was one that Imrae had often resorted to when the Handmaiden was feeling most impatient with him. Not to mention that this particular female had done it before while he was tied up when she had accidentally let her anger slip in front of him. Though it was common for females to use an off-hand weapon and whip at the same time, it was not as common for them to hone their physical combat abilities, and they usually chose to hide behind enchanted armor and spells. For those ordained in Lloth's temple, Lloth herself was their only necessary shield. The whip cracked through the air toward Solaufein's throat, but struck his outstretched arm instead and wrapped around it. The dynamic abruptly changed.

Akordia frowned. Solaufein grinned and pulled the whip, spinning forward in a blur of footwork to wrap the whip further and further up his arm until he was but a few footfalls from her. A spell loosed from her lips a little too late as she let go of the whip allowing the handle to fall into Solaufein's own hand, and stepped back. She tried to stab close at Solaufein with the gleaming black blade now that his guard was down.

Solaufein allowed the red-armored female her strike, unhindered by his presence as he merely stepped to the side and she stabbed at empty air. He pulled on her grip and sent the elbow that that the whip had wound around right to her unarmored face, hitting her in the nose.

Her arrogant expression changed to one of pain as she fell backward and Enserric fell from her grip. With both of her weapons gone, she was about to get desperate. Before she could let off another spell he let the whip fall from his arm and gripped it, cracking it out towards her head. Akordia's arm (predictably) went up to her throat to give her room to breathe within the whip's grip, which left her side vulnerable to a sword. Enserric pierced through her armpit and the startled Akordia fell to her knees as the red within the black blade pulsed, reacting to the life's blood it had stolen. "Nau . . ." Was her last utterance before the blade in her heart drained the last of her life.

Solaufein shivered, but nonetheless felt rejuvenated as a slick, uncomfortable feeling washed over his entire body. His half-healed lashes and wounds over the past few days seemed completely healed. Though it almost felt like a barrel of snakes had been upended upon him. He kicked the dead female off of his sword, tearing it free and took a deep breath to shake the feeling off. "Enserric," he uttered curtly.

"Yeees?" The sword chimed in a happy tone.

"Thank you." After all, if it had not been for the spirit's warning, he might never have escaped captivity. "Can you sense how many enemies are left?" Several globes of darkness had fallen over the battlefield, and the warlock had taken to hiding behind a boulder and cursing under her breath. Deekin was still nowhere to be seen, but there was now a suspicious large direwolf running about and knocking over enemies here and there, howling distractingly. Solaufein felt more alive than he had in a long time, thanks mostly to the sword's enchantment - and revenge was always sweet to taste.

"I believe at least five," Enserric finally decided.

"At least," the dark elf drolled.

His sword spluttered. "Don't judge me! The magic in the air has my signal all jumbled!"

Solaufein shook his head, not understanding at all, and ran over to Binne. She perked up at the sight of him, but he could smell the fear off her, even as it began to evaporate at his approach. He passed her the whip he'd taken from the priestess without a word, having seen her use one made of energy and knowing that she was at least less incompetent with it than she was with the staff that they'd lost track of in their capture. "What—" she was about to say, but he put up a hand to stall the cambion's remark, pointed up, and leapt out into the darkness.

Two weapon masters remained, and two of the attackers lay dead. Solaufein distracted one while he left his flank open to a few arrows from the enemy scouts, which slowed his movements down enough for Enserric to get in a few good slashes. It did not deter the weapon master's determination, and he appeared to experience a second wind when he dropped his own globe of darkness on top of Solaufein's head. Solaufein dodged out and away from the circle and went around, but the warlock beat him to it - the ceiling was far enough away from the spell that it didn't affect her eyesight or other senses, and a whip cracked down from above that successfully dragged the surprised weapon master by the leg out of the globe and deposited him in front of Solaufein's feet. He gave a quick salute to the a'temra on the ceiling after he beheaded his startled enemy. He paid no mind to the mess that sprayed out from the neck as his the elf's body collapsed, still coasting as he was on Enserric's bloody rejuvenation.

The last enemy died rather suddenly as his assassin appeared spelled out of invisibility from behind him - a female in the leather armor who let her foe fall from her blade in dispassion. The one that he had healed (more or less upon instinct and not really out of logic) had finally rejoined the fight to end it. Her eyes remained fixed on Solaufein even as she killed; he was more concerned about finding his companions, since the other dark elves didn't seem to be a threat.

"Deekin?" Solaufein called out, whipping around to try and find the kobold with infra-vision. His eyes swept over a gray expanse dotted with the curling heat signatures of their unexpected allies - he cursed under his breath when he remembered that kobolds were cold-blooded. "It is safe, they are all dead."

"Deekin?" Came the responding scratch which caused his heart to swell with relief. Out from behind one of the tents, the kobold padded forward on the back of the very large, tongue-lolling direwolf. "Battle be finally over?" He asked in barely expressed relief.

Solaufein nodded tiredly, and slumped down to the ground when a wave of exhaustion swept over him. He swatted at a bloody lock of white (now pink) hair that fell into his eyes. They had been marching for days on very little food or water, all three of them, and had just fought in a tense and unexpected battle for their lives. Enserric's enchantment had given him a brilliant second wind, but now the bone-deep exhaustion was starting to set in. "We need to strip the camp," he realized wearily.

The cambion plopped down quietly beside the three from the ceiling into a protected roll, and came to a seat beside him. She assessed his condition with wary eyes as she batted her wild, long hair out of her face. "You alright?" she asked brusquely.

Solaufein assessed her haggard appearance in turn and his tongue stilled as he was about to ask her the same question. Her eyes were bright and expression concerned. She did not appear to be different, or changed, though he supposed they all must look a little different. More worn maybe, hair slightly longer, dirtier, and a little harder in the eyes. Time was ill-measured in Undermountain; how long had they been prisoners? What perhaps was days had felt like weeks. He sensed that there would be long-term changes for her yet in store that aroused from these events. For him, it was as if he had walked into his old life and felt right at home despite his conscience disagreeing. Even Deekin, though yet fairly young, had experienced many great and terrible things in his life even after he earned his freedom from Tymofarrar. For Binne who was as much a mystery as an open book, he wondered if it felt more like stepping into a different world. Her nature had proven adaptable so far, and had no reason to believe that she would fail to adjust.

He instead nodded, choosing to trust that she would tell him about any concerns she deemed important. Binne seemed to crave guidance most, which he could offer. "You and Deekin search for food, water, any supplies. Strip anything of value you see. There should be plenty of healing potions, and the wolf might be able to sniff out traps."

His tired companions exchanged a weary glance but nodded and went about his request. Binne's legs easily kept up with the wolf-straddled Deekin as they went to quick work looting first the bodies of valuables and piling them in the center of the room. He watched for a little while, amused as they appeared to struggle to get some scale male off of one of the archers, the effort sending Deekin flying back onto his backside and Binne flying back with the mail in hand, still attached to one of the arms of the archer. She screamed achingly high and threw it off, before appearing to reconsider her action and then took up the severed arm to chase Deekin around for laughing at her, with Deekin screeching until they wore themselves out quickly.

The other dark elves that had survived milled about, recovering from minor injuries and taking care of their own dead. There were three on their side that had fallen - two archers and a scout, it seemed. He considered using his rod to resurrect those allies that had fallen, but did not know their true intention, and remained ambivalent on the matter. Solaufein waited for a moment to see if the black-clad female would approach him, or if he would have to approach her. She continued staring at him after tending to her surviving companions. He was struck by the obvious concern she showed for them, knowing it was unbecoming of a female in command to do so. It did not take her long to make up her mind as she nervously stepped forward. Her hand remained near her short sword at all times, but her bearing was measured and careful.

Now that he had seen the quiet female move, it made him wonder at her training. She was not, nor could be, one of the priestesses of Lloth - for she moved too much like a hunter of the dark. Like him. Warily, quietly, and quickly. Her expression was a careful, indifferent mask as impenetrable as his own.

His hand reflexively twitched to his sword when he acknowledged her presence. The dhaerow woman's shoulders were tense, and she remained battle ready. He waited for her to say something, but she said nothing. "Since you have not tried to kill me yet, I presume you are not my enemy," he uttered in quiet Common. "You'll forgive me if I keep my hand on my sword. We have traveled many days and known nothing but enemies. Maybe a mad dryad," he reconsidered. "One very strange goblin," he added. "And I suppose upstairs is where I met Binne. Oh, and the ogre."

She responded with a curiously courteous bow that he'd never seen a dhaerow perform before. It seemed an almost noble gesture. "Usstan hass'l dos nau jivviim," she greeted formally in an even, calming voice and held up her hands without their weapons (though they remained sheathed at her side for quick access).

Solaufein allowed his hand to stray away from Enserric, but remained seated less out of a desire to be impolite and more because his legs didn't seem to want to move on their own anymore. He felt leaden, glued to the ground. "How long have you been tracking them?" He continued in Common more or less for his companions' benefit, knowing that at least Binne could hear him in the cavern and would be able to respond if the encounter turned combative.

"We've been tracking you," she revealed. Her voice was clear in any language it seemed, and her accent was very faint, but her pronunciation distinctive enough that he could tell she was no surfacer. She probably spoke the language better than him, though, given he'd only had about a decade of learning compared to her lifetime and had given up on trying to get rid of his accent. Where she came from and her intentions were in question, but she was clearly the leader of this band. Her right, as a female.

"Who sent you?" He demanded.

"Not the Valsharess," was all she would say on the matter. "She has many enemies, and we are but a few. What you need to know is that she has personally targeted and named you, and desires your capture. We do not exactly know why. I was instructed to find and ask you to help me find Halaster and free him however possible, in exchange for an offer of our aide to help protect you from the Valsharess."

He stared at her. She was young by his people's standards, and he gathered that he must have at least two centuries over her. It was in the eyes, mostly - humans had the luxury of appearing the age that they were and changing over years, while the only way to determine an elf's age was in the eyes, which always betrayed them. They were on the pale side of red and were bright, cautious, but curious - and that curiosity was shining openly when she looked at him. She seemed at least as sincere as her blade, and like it, she was undoubtedly sharp. He doubted very much she could offer protection that he could not offer himself. "What is your name?" He asked politely, deciding this female deserved deference.

"I am Nathyrra." She nodded and cast her gaze down, her silver hair shaking forward and back.

He pointed vaguely at the other end of the cavern where he could hear Binne and Deekin arguing over some enchanted goods they found and he identified. "You know my name. Over there are my abbin, Binne and Deekin. I was asked by the Lords of Waterdeep to look into Halaster's disappearance. Our capture here was unexpected, and the rescue needed. I am in your debt. I will not stand for you, for I am weary."

She frowned and looked away. When she looked back, her eyes were less bright. "There is no debt. You saved my life, if you recall." He waved it off. "We have some supplies, if the camp here is lacking, for you to replenish yourself. I intend to send my people back to our outpost and travel now with you, to find Halaster. The enemy's z'orr tizzin were uninjured in the battle," and with this she paused and gestured towards the mounts of the scouts that had remained largely undisturbed throughout the battle. They were well broken and used to gore. "My intent was to use them so that we might gain back some of the time you've lost."

He eyed the lizards contemplatively. Freeing Halaster seemed such a far off goal that it made him wonder how much time he had truly lost. "You know of the one they call Valsharess," he stated.

Nathyrra nodded. "I know much about her, and her forces. I will tell you what I can once we free Halaster. He must be the priority, because he is the only one who can close this surface entrance into Waterdeep for good."

"It is a title for the spider bitch," he commented. Nathyrra's gaze did not move from his. She did not nod, or flinch, and appeared to have no love for Lloth. This, he considered, was as alarming as it was a relief.

He sensed and smelled the cambion before she approached, coming to a stop by his left shoulder. "Mayhap rethink that plan o' yours. Halaster's as mad as a hatter and probably madder still now that Solaufein killed 'is only son," Binne suddenly spoke up, having chosen that precise moment to interject and Solaufein had no doubt it was on purpose. Her tail swished betraying her amusement while Nathyrra's expression turned to one of surprise and horror. Solaufein kicked her in her booted foot; she'd recovered most of her equipment, but seemed to prefer the whip to her other weapons. She rolled her eyes at the half-hearted attack and her tail reflexively swatted at his offending foot.

"It was a flesh golem," Solaufein defended tiredly. "Not a son! Let it go!"

"Halaster has a son whom he turned into a flesh golem?" Nathyrra's horror grew, as did her misunderstanding.

Solaufein decided this conversation was going nowhere and had no desire to endure Binne's further taunts about that particular misadventure. He grumbled quietly about how mad wizards could all rot in the Hells while he stretched his pained limbs and went in search of Deekin as well as rations. The mystery of Nathyrra and her allies could certainly wait until he had recovered somewhat from their ordeal.

"You know," his sword suddenly spoke up, sounding a little miffed. "You never asked me to be your dagger!"

Solaufein stopped mid-stride, feeling confused and alarmed at the sword's tone. He stared down at the bloodied weapon. "Are you . . . jealous that I used another weapon?"

The sword hesitated in response. "A little! _I_ can shrink to a dagger, you know."

"I need to find your sheath."

"You can stifle my voice, but not my spirit!" Enserric cried. "I have feelings, you know!"

It took about an hour to sort through all of the gear they'd gathered. He found another sheath for Enserric since he could not find the original of dhaerow craftsmanship, and replaced his armor with an enchanted set they acquired from a corpse. They placed what they could into the bag of holding and Solaufein had summoned the d'jinn to pawn a few items off to the inter-dimensional merchant. A few weapons they thought might be of use and components Deekin and Binne desired for alchemy were stored in the Reaper's room, which Solaufein truly dreaded as it required portal travel (and also because he'd forgotten how to summon a portal from it to that nexus realm, and it took him a few frustrated minutes of muttering to himself before he figured it out - he could hardly blame Deekin for not using it earlier when he noticed that the carved gems inside of it were facing the wrong direction).

The warlock took it in stride that he had an inter-dimensional key in his pocket that led to his own nexus-realm, as well as an interdimensional d'jinn merchant he could call up in emergencies, and only complained that the relic couldn't get them to Halaster faster since he hadn't thought to place a binding to their old location. The only binding he had in place led back to his room in the Yawning Portal, which was not of much use to them now that they were pressed for time.

He had offered Nathyrra the chance to resurrect her allies, which she took gladly. Only two of them were able to return, however, as they for whatever reason did not or chose not to cross back over. While she and her allies were constructing a cairn, Solaufein and his allies dined on potions and salted rothe meat. It did restore their strength a little, but all three admitted freely that they'd rather be sleeping than going on to take the fight to Halaster.

Once the other dark elves were finished with their makeshift funeral and the other two were successfully adjusted from their disorientation upon waking up from death, Nathyrra approached him again cautiously as before. "We must leave, as soon as you are ready," she told him. "Our destination is half a day's journey from—"

"Hang on a minute," the cambion interrupted with a frown. "'o is this, exactly?" She looked to him and pointed at Nathyrra. "She's new, right? Or have I lost my mind?"

Nathyrra opened her mouth to respond, but Solaufein beat her to the punch. "Nathyrra, and we are not, as of yet," Solaufein told her and turned back to Nathyrra. "Unlike you I no longer believe Halaster is in any immediate danger."

The dark elven female seemed frustrated with this answer. "He is imprisoned by the Valsharess, and we cannot waste a minute. I know you have endured much, but for the sake of my people, I need your help to free him. The Valsharess needs him alive to keep Undermountain open - if he were dead, it would collapse. I have read that his magic is innate to the place, in tune with him as an arch-wizard might be in his own tower. He is the only one with any real power here."

Solaufein turned to Binne and Deekin, seeking opinions. Deekin's was most thoughtful. "Deekin not really believe a big scary wizard with a name like Blackcloak go and get captured by anyone by accidentally or on purpose. Maybe accidentally on purpose. Not even by drow, although you all is pretty tricky. No offense, Boss."

"None is taken," the warrior replied contemplatively, scratching his chin. "So you too think it is a trap?"

Binne nodded at Deekin's words. "Trap for whom? Sod's a loony, but powerful. Don't know why he'd plan on getting captured. Seems like an elaborate suicide."

Solaufein considered this eventuality. He remembered seething at Phaere for allowing herself to become captured by illithid and had called her plan many things, 'suicidal' least amongst them. He'd been infuriated, but overall lucky that Veldrin had been there to keep the Handmaiden from flaying him on the spot. Phaere's insane defense was that it would bring her closer to the illithid's leadership, and she 'had not anticipated' the strength of their psionic blasts. If Halaster was the same kind of insane that she was, perhaps it was for a similar reason. "Perhaps to draw out his enemy, to bring his enemy closer to him, and to catch them off guard," he mulled. "It is a mad plan."

"A mad wizard with a mad plan sounds about right," Binne nodded, and bit into another bit of meat.

"The consequences of his capture have opened the Underdark's forces to Waterdeep," Nathyrra reminded him. Her eyes were quite expressive and reflected her urgency. "People are dying every day because of his capture, whether or not it was intentional. If you want to save this surface city, we must act quickly to free him."

Solaufein was a little less eager to free Halaster - not that he didn't agree that saving people was a good and noble thing to do, but he had no desire to rush into his own death. He was sure that was what awaited him if Halaster found out about his killing of the flesh golem on the second level. "What does fate really smell like?" He asked Binne. Her nose was a bit more sensitive than his.

Her brow scrunched under her horns. "Coriander and grave-soil with a bit o' rain. Bit subtle, but she's got it." She pointed at the confused Nathyrra.

He sighed. "I miss the rain. Very well, Nathyrra. We should go." He turned to the warlock and his bard friend. "I will not ask you to follow me into this. We may die."

Deekin shrugged. "Deekin die all the time. Er, maybe it was only that once, but Deekin also get knocked unconscious a lot since he take up adventuring, and he remember dying only hurt a little while before it gets better. Worst part is only remembering what rats do to Deekin's eyeballs." Solaufein recalled that same memory from the ruins of Undrentide, and scowled in unison with the kobold.

Binne also shrugged. "Could die any day. Rather it be my choice. I'm with you, Solaufein."

He turned to the black-armored woman. "How many mounts can we use?"

She thought about this for a second, brow creasing. "Three. My people need at least two, to return to our outpost and report back, and it will take them several days. I believe Deekin can ride with me." She suddenly smiled, which seemed a peculiar but not at all unpleasant expression to cross her face. He studied her; it suddenly struck Solaufein that he had never really been treated politely by any dhaerow female in his life, or with this amount of deference courtesy. He wasn't even sure if he'd ever seen one smile in a way that wasn't cruel, or viciously pleased - not since his first century before Phaere had been corrupted by Lolth. And while Viconia De'Vir was many things, polite was definitely not one of them. "I do not mind. I am the smallest and lightest, and it makes the most sense," Nathyrra reasoned.

The cambion seemed unsure of herself. "We're going to ride those . . . Lizard-things?"

"Tunnel-crawlers," Solaufein corrected, "is perhaps a better translation. They lack eyes and see by sound, as bats do. You must cling to the reigns, or fall, for they travel as like your spider-spell." She gulped. Deekin appeared excited and his earlier weariness from their capture disappeared for a little while. They retrieved most of their gear that had been taken, although he kept the dagger that Enserric had been sensitive about.

Before they left, the warlock approached him when he was away from the others with an unusually tense air about her. "Er, Solaufein. May I ask a favor?"

He cocked up an eyebrow in curiosity. She had never asked him for anything before. "Speak it."

Her hands reached up to the mass of long, red-black hair that had gotten tangled and matted over the days. The mane was, or had been magnificent by even dark elven standards and reached her lower back, but had clearly grown cumbersome. Solaufein was fond of it - it was one of the first things he noticed about her after the obvious traits - though it looked bedraggled now. It'd been bound by a few ties before, but those were long gone. He recalled that, during her 'punishment,' her rapist had knotted it back in his hand and used it as a painful grip on her head, yanking more than a few strands out. It had neither been combed nor brushed since their capture. "Would you cut my hair?" She asked of him plaintively. "Just hack it all off, I'm done with it. No comb can ever save it now."

He examined the mane, and felt a twinge of an unnamed emotion. "It could still be cleaned, and braided back," he offered instead. "Though it may be some time before then. Are you certain you wish this?"

She did not seem certain; she shifted uneasily and her eyes hesitated to reach his. Her actions and hesitation struck a chord of empathy in him. "Well, I don't want to be held quite like that again. It was. It. It was a powerless feeling. I don't." She couldn't seem to complete her thought, but Solaufein understood immediately.

He simply nodded. "I used to have the exact same problem until I cut mine. I had long, luxurious hair once. Became a liability in battle, however."

Binne seemed dubious. "You? With long hair?" Her faced scrunched in thought.

"And luxurious," he bragged, folding his arms. "Long and thick hair is a sign of beauty amongst my kin. See Nathyrra's group? I kept a small length." His hands ran over his shaven sides and he noted they'd grown longer, making a mental note to clean it up when he next had the time.

She laughed a little bit more like her previous self. "Well, maybe don't cut all of mine off. Just somewhere around my shoulders, above where the tangling is worse. It's a lot of weight, now."

He nodded again and bade her to sit. He took out the adamantine dagger and pulled her hair back, earning a wince and tense back from the warlock. He let go somewhat and held still. "Breathe," he suggested gently.

"I-I don't know-why-" she struggled to explain, and her hands began to tremble. She started to cover her face with her hands, but he pulled them away and forced her to look at him instead with a gentle hand.

"Breathe," he instructed, holding her gaze steadily. "This feeling will pass. It may return, but remember that it always will pass. All you can do is breathe." She took his suggestion and her reactive state seemed to calm down. He suspected that she might have such a reaction to anyone grabbing at her hair; it was normal, to have a reflex to trauma - after all, it had been but a day (or so, who knew) ago that it'd been used against her. He'd experienced a few over the years, and had seen many in others. Imoen, in particular, he recalled had woken up from many nightmares in the night and had an occasional episode of bizarre hallucinations where she seemed to believe she was still in the dungeon of Jon Irenicus. He was impressed that Binne was holding up as well as she was, all things considered, and found himself taking pride in his choice of companions. She had fortitude, as did Deekin, who both remained undimmed by their experience.

He was quick about it and hacked off the matted length, letting it fall to the ground, and trimmed a few pieces that lingered. She leaned forward as soon as he was finished and sighed in relief.

"Oh! Ha! I feel as though I had a weight on my neck!" She pulled and played at the dark length that brushed her shoulders in joy. "Ah've never felt free-er. Do I look fetching?"

"It suits you, and it is still long enough to weave," he answered. "Here. Hold still." She did, and dutifully didn't flinch once while he used his fingers to separate her hair quickly into lengths and braided it gently back. He made a makeshift tie out of a piece of cut lacing from a boot, and released her, feeling oddly much less weary than he did before. Binne was well pleased and seemed more like herself after. Perhaps it was an unnecessary comfort, but it felt important to him because it seemed to be important to her.

"Thank you," she said with utter sincerity in her amber eyes.

"I killed him," he told her and wasn't really sure what possessed him to say so.

The warlock tensed for a moment, but then smiled somewhat sadly. "Doesn't really change what happened, does it?"

He shrugged. "Nothing can change that, but I got him with this dagger, and now he is dead." He gestured to the one he'd used to cut her hair, and her smile brightened.

She sighed, and lines crinkled around her eyes even as she smiled. "Just, only a shame I didn't get to 'im first. But, good. May they all rot in the Abyss or wherever it is they end up. Hopefully somewhere horrible with lots of pointy things that they get stabbed with all the times."

He nodded. "I am sure there is a special pointy punishment in store for them, wherever they are now."

"Yes. A special, pointy Hell!"

They did not speak more on the matter. He doubted that she wanted to, but he purposefully left the discussion open should she try to revisit it. A part of him felt guilty for his actions that had led to her suffering, but he knew deep down that he was not the one responsible. The ones that were had died, and that would have to suffice. Only time would heal things. He felt sure, after speaking with Binne then, that she would recover. She would not entirely be the same, but she would heal in time. Much like Deekin, there was a strength of spirit in her that helped renew his own.

They left soon after the other three scouts did. The only one who seemed to enjoy the long, half-day ride was Deekin, whom for whatever reason was thrilled the entire time. Said it felt like flying on the back of a cave dragon. He pestered Nathyrra with questions during the brief water break they'd taken. By far Binne enjoyed the ride the least, but also complained the least and stuck to scowls and rubbing her backside. He was sympathetic to the pain, but they all knew they couldn't stop for long. It was honestly surprising how time flew as they back-tracked swiftly through the tunnels. Marching in a large group had forced them to go much, much slower. The z'orr tizzin proved their worth and trudged on tirelessly for the twelve to thirteen hours. There were all rather sore from the saddles at the end, and a few healing kits were spared so that they didn't all walk bow-legged. Binne, by far suffered the worst from it, and seemed to be a magnet for 'arse-pain' as she dubbed it.

When the time came to dismount, they threw the saddles and bags off of their mounts and bade them to flee, since none of them were certain that they would return by that route. An odd clarity washed over Solaufein as they began to follow Nathyrra on foot when he realized he was very likely going to die in the next few hours, whether or not they freed Halaster. It was liberating, rather than disheartening. The only part of him that felt a pang was the part that missed his old friends, whom he'd likely never see again. Still, he would die amongst honored friends in battle, and that was a better death than most had.

They traveled through the mining tunnels until they reached a peculiar metal door built into the cavern itself. A glow of magic was about it that set his teeth on edge. "Methinks Halaster lays beyond this door," Enserric piped up. "This magic reeks of the rest of Undermountain."

Nathyrra nodded from his side. "I can dispel it and get us inside, but we must be prepared for the worst. This is the only entrance that I—"

A rumbling beneath the earth disrupted Nathyrra's words and set them all into states of alarm. Deekin, or Binne (he could never be sure) let out a shriek that was abruptly stifled once they remembered they were supposed to be stealthy, which seemed to be a hard concept for his companions to really grasp. From the far wall of the cavern, his heat vision detected the unmistakable forms of Formians amidst an all-too familiar clicking noise.

"Let me," Solaufein spoke, motioning for everyone to be still. Everyone but Deekin gave him rather incredulous looks as he approached the Formians that had literally appeared out of nowhere, in a tunnel they'd dug from the main dungeon to get to them.

The one he'd freed, the Queen (or so he suspected) was not amongst them. Instead, a large black Formian clattered forward on six legs and clicked his mandibles at Solaufein. The man stopped and held still to wait for the telepathic impressions. _*__Help drow/Help free* _Was what he received, along with a mental image of a runed circle with an old man chained to the ground inside of it, surrounded by five white stones. _ *__Help Halaster*_ the Formian added, like an afterthought.

Solaufein nodded. "There are many of my people in there. We will form a plan. Do you have another way into that room?" He gestured.

The Formians clicked amongst each other. About seven more poured out of the tunnel and chittered. _*__We fight/We bring/We make the way*_ The black, chitinous soldier sent. Solaufein nodded again and bowed in gratitude, hoping they'd not misinterpret the gesture.

He strolled back to his companions. "Making friends with bugs now?" Binne teased. "Quite the budding druid, you are."

He glared at her, but couldn't really dispute the remark considering all the goblins, kobolds, Formians, and swords he'd befriended lately. "I freed their leader in the caves. She appears to have sent them to help us free Halaster. They can dig and find a back route into the chamber while we charge the front. I want you, Deekin, and Nathyrra to go with them. Does anyone have any suggestions for battle plans?"

Many ideas were put forward and a few tossed out. They were exhausted from the last battle, but Binne had an Eryines that she could summon under her employ, as well as her familiar who was a dour but surprisingly quick-witted Imp named Hembercane. Deekin was able to bring forth a few elementals and one Shadow of necromantic origin, as well as summon a spider or two with a wand he'd had in his bag. Nathyrra had summoned the earth elemental before, it seemed, and had only one more of that spell in her disposal - she would hold off on summoning the elder earth elemental until the Formians were in position. Binne had given him the spider aspect once more, and he had her spelled into invisibility along with her Eryine with instructions on freeing Halaster by any means necessary, while Solaufein distracted the bulk of the enemy. Any priestesses and wizards were top priority targets, after the one that was holding Halaster's key.

With his death surely approaching, Solaufein felt confident that he would at least go out with a large bang. He prayed briefly to his goddess for strength before entering through the main door that Nathyrra dispelled, and she dropped a globe of darkness over his position as soon as the door opened and they heard a shout of alarm. The Formians had enough time to impart a decent mental image on the enemy fortifications as they tunneled through the other side as fast as they could. Archers lined the walls, with a heavy enforcements at the door of both swordsmen, wizards, and at least three priestesses. Only one appeared to be guarding Halaster himself, who had been the wrinkled old man in the imprisonment spell he'd seen in his mind's eye. When the darkness kicked in, Solaufein climbed up the wall behind him and wrapped the piwafwi he still had around his form, shielding himself from the spectrum of heat and ran in a wide circle. They would surely see his trail, but he counted on the archers being slower than his boots of speed.

Alarm in the room was raised just as he had reached the first group of archers, and dropped down from the ceiling to wreak havoc on the enemy. He dropped down sword first and nearly cleaved an entire archer in two, briefly lodging Enserric. "Shrink!" He commanded the sword and tried to kick the body off just as his fellow soldier swung low with his short sword and stabbed at Solaufein's legs with his second. Solaufein spun the body of the one his sword was still lodged in around to take the blow for him and kicked out behind him, hitting a shield and knocking its wielder off balance as more closed in on him. Enserric's blade seemed to disappear into the handle briefly as its length changed, and the dead body finally fell free. He pulled the dagger quickly out of his boot and parried a blow from the swordsman behind him, and went on the defensive. "You could - hah! - enlarge - any time now!" He gritted out as the enemy pressed his assault.

"Well, it's been a while!" The sword defended in a huffy tone and suddenly grew to the length of a greatsword. With the unexpected weight in his hand, Solaufein plunged his adamantine dagger into one that had charged him and swung in a messy z'ress a'thalak maneuver that required some adaptability. The greatsword of Enserric unexpectedly cut through two of his enemies at once, leaving only just one more archer on the platform.

Solaufein had to dodge a bolt before he got in close enough to impale his enemy. "We have to work on our communication skills," he decided, addressing Enserric.

"I agree," the sword huffed. "This is all getting very messy."

"Just go back to a normal size," he commanded and retrieved his dagger, feeling his arm lighten as Enserric changed into a longsword once more. He switched his stance to bautha z'hin and used the haste enchantment and Binne's ever-useful spider-walk to run off of the platform's edge and down it, toward the cell where he saw Halaster being imprisoned.

A quick assessment revealed the Formians had already flanked the enemy and were working on the second platform. A group of reinforcements had come from the summoning from the wizards and priestesses, but for each one of them that was taken out, a few summoned beasts would disappear. The earth elemental was proving useful in keeping two of the diviners distracted while Binne attempted to keep the chief priestess - another female clad in specifically red armor - while Nathyrra was working on toppling over the stones imprisoning the mad wizard with Deekin's assistance in the form of a determined water elemental. He threw his dagger at the priestess to draw her attention away so that the cambion might get in a good lick with her whip, but instead the warlock brought her leg and tail around in a wide sweep that knocked the priestess off of her legs and threw a mailed fist into her face.

The red-armored cleric snarled and charged at the cambion after rolling away in time to avoid the blow, putting his friend on the defensive. Noticing that the Eryines was nearby and poisoned to attack, he left the battle and ran up the second platform to help the Formians finish off the archers, as well as a wizard up there who had trapped himself in a globe of invulnerability.

The wizard, like most others he had met (with maybe the exception of one in his entire life) was arrogant in his escape. He didn't expect Solaufein to point Enserric at him and cast a rather effective dispel; he didn't like to use his gifts only but sparingly, but it made the look on his enemies' faces worth it when it caught them by surprise. The wizard was dead a moment later, and Enserric the Gray had another life to ghoulishly feed on.

He glanced down at the still-imprisoned wizard and saw all but two of the pillars were down. One of the diviners had been squashed by the other elemental, but the other had successfully banished all of their allies except one spider and the earth elemental. She finally cast a confusion spell on it that appeared to have worked, in that the earth elemental appeared confused as to the location of his enemy and started beating on the walls and ground. Solaufein ran down the second platform again, trusting the Formians to finish off the work.

He was about to stab the other diviner in the back when the Imp, Hembercane, had canceled his invisibility a few inches away from the diviner's face. She didn't have time to blink before the sour-faced Imp breathed, or burped, a large amount of fire into her face that lit her hair and eyebrows, and causing her to panic. Solaufein beheaded her shortly after as she ran into him in her panic and nodded at the Imp. Hembercane flapped in place and made a 'tsk' noise.

"_Henotep_ . . . gaer!" Nathyrra grunted from the other side of the prison, trying her best with the last water elemental to push over another large white rune stone.

The cleric in red was the only one left, and continued to be kept at bay by Binne and her Eryines. She appeared to realize this and for a moment made eye contact with him. The red priestess ran for Nathyrra rapier-first. Solaufein moved to stop her at the same time the cambion did, but rather than attack Nathyrra as suspected the priestess whirled around and stabbed the cambion right through the chest.

Binne let out a startled bloody cough before sliding off the blade, just before the priestess did the same thing as her neck became pierced by Solaufein's black sword.

Just then, the last runic stone that held Halaster's prison together fell to the ground and cracked in two. Nathyrra bent over in relief, and the water elemental beside her disappeared in a puddle as Deekin approached from the back of the last spider that he'd chosen to ride. A whirring noise filled Solaufein's ears as he noticed the prone wizard began to emit an incandescent white light.

He did not care and knew he'd very likely die soon enough. He knelt to Binne's level and took off his glove to grasp her hand when she reached it out weakly at the sight of him. His fingers sought out the fluttering pulse at the inside of her wrist. She had started fleeing into unconsciousness and was bleeding out from the wound; a poison on the blade had changed her coloring rather rapidly. "Deekin," he called out, and heard the spider's legs ticking in his approach. The Eryines disappeared as soon as her summoner died, along with Hembercane the imp who scoffed and flashed away in a huff. Binne's eyes were closed, and her pulse gone. "Get the rod," he impassively instructed.

Everything went white before he heard Deekin's answer. He thought he might be blind, but still felt the warlock's cooling hand in his own. "I gots it!" Deekin suddenly cried out and a loud THUNK of something hitting flesh resounded. His vision returned as the cambion's breath did. He found himself letting out a held-in breath of relief without realizing it. Only momentarily gone, Binne sat straight up after the Sunite's rod struck her.

"Did I just die?!" She whirled about, looking between the kobold, Solaufein, and her imp flapping in their air next to Nathyrra - it seemed that Hembercane had summoned itself upon her resurrection, after her death had banished him. She shuddered. "I d—Oh no, never doing that again. No, no, no—oh, I think I'm gonna be sick— "

Solaufein held up a hand to silence her and pointed to the suddenly standing mad wizard who was examining all of them rather contemptuously, despite not wearing anything but a loincloth. Nathyrra, from a few feet away, tried to approach and addressed the wizard by name fearfully . . . And then a second wizard of identical features in a red bath robe appeared right next to the formerly-imprisoned Halaster. "Hal?" The clone greeted, stroking his long, white beard. Solaufein put his gloves back on, and estimated his odds of survival had just decreased by at least half.

"Hal Two?" The first Halaster said, also stroking his cleaner, less bedraggled beard. "I thought we had an arrangement!" He suddenly shouted at his cleaner, less bedraggled clone.

The second Halaster flapped his arms. "We had no such thing! And you're Hal Two, not I! The arrangement was conditional on your capture! You're not captured anymore, you blighted idiot!"

"Don't get mad at me!" The first flapped right back. "I may be separate, but I'm your equal!"

"Oh we are separate," the second Halaster growled and shook his fist at his counterpart, "but we are not equal!"

"That's clone discrimination, that is!" The first one roared in the second one's face. "I'll not work under these conditions! Don't make me unionize!"

Hal Two laughed uproariously. "Who ever heard of a magical clone union?!"

"Why the fuck are there two of 'im now? He's supposed to be one, not two!" Binne wondered out loud uselessly.

Both Halasters turned their attention to her and the wary dark elves. "Seen you from afar, we have," the second Halaster began, and then the first continued his thought in a bitter voice, "and seen your misdeeds!"

The first (the one held captive) got mad at Halaster the Second-to-Arrive again. "Oi, don't talk over me!"

Halaster two sneered right back, "_you_'re the one talking over me!"

"Shut up!"

"No you shut up and help me smite these meddling idiots who killed our son!"

"Naut l'xsa n'tranz'luin 'sohna," Solaufein muttered into his palm as his face met it.

"Halaster, please!" Nathyrra spoke up to the mad wizard. She flinched under his ire, which was now focused on her. "Halasters. I-people are dying. Undermountain must close, or Waterdeep will fall. If it is the Valsharess that you fear, my people are already fighting her. We will continue to fight her for as long as we have to. But please, spare Solaufein. My people need him. We are fighting the Valsharess daily. We need his help!"

"We needed Berger!" The both cried out at the same time. The haggard one looked angry and the other one just looked depressed. "Who's going to make my tea the way I like it now?/Who will ghostwrite my autobiography now?" They both cried at the same time, and then turned to Solaufein. "No, I'm afraid the drow must die," the first Halaster decided.

"Wait," the second said, just as Nathyrra opened her mouth to object. "I—"

"Oh, stuff it you mad codger!" The cambion snapped, losing her mind or her patience, Solaufein wasn't sure. He absently wondered how many charges his rod of resurrection had left. She ambled to her feet and swayed a bit in place, but nonetheless managed to come across as indignant. Solaufein appreciated the effort, if not the execution. "My arse has taken QUITE the beating and we've been through a bloody LOT in the last few days and I just DIED trying to free you, you bloody ungrateful twattering—" A grease spell, or something worse, caused the floor to slick under Binne's feet. She would claim it was a grease spell later, but it was very likely her own spilled blood that caused her to trip and fall, injuring her tail and backside again with a pained cry as she landed on it. "Arrrrrrgh! My _arse__!_ Why is it always me arse?!"

Unexpectedly, both Halasters began to laugh themselves into nigh hysterics at the sight. Solaufein was a little darkly amused as well, but managed to stifle his chuckling. When they were crying, leaning on each other, the second Halaster said to the other, "I have a much better plan. With _much _more suffering."

The first Halaster literally clapped in glee, which sent a chill down everyone's spine. Especially Enserric's, who let out a low-pitched whine. "I don't like the sound of this at all," the sword demurred, glittering red from his black depths.

"I like it even less," Solaufein muttered back.

The second Halaster gave the dark elf a measured look, like he was calculating the worth of the his innards. He spoke an arcane phrase and a light was sent through Solaufein's skull. It rent through his thoughts and psyche with such a force that he felt it must have come out the other side of his head. It pinched first between his brow, and then it screamed. Or perhaps he was the one who was screaming. He was on the ground, and there was the blood or 'grease spell' that Binne had slipped in that smelled of ash and copper, and the pain was unlike anything he'd ever experienced in his life. He'd met some creative torments over the years, but nothing compared to the splitting pain in his skull that continued throbbing even after it had abated somewhat, and sent him reeling to the floor in nausea in the after-shock.

"No!" He heard Nathyrra cry out. Hands were around his, trying to pull them from his face, pull him back up, but he couldn't face it. The pain was too much. He gripped Enserric as if it were his lifeline and tried his best to breathe when a voice nearby suggested that he do just that.

"You ungrateful sods!" The warlock screeched from the ground. Solaufein looked up at just the wrong, or right time as both Halasters sent an identical ball of light that collided with the base of Binne's tail and sent her doubled over in pain again, whimpering. Solaufein wanted to laugh at her luck just as she started screeching about arse-pain again, but there was another light that engulfed him that distracted him. For a moment, he wondered if he had gone blind or was in the process of, for the world had grown dim and blurry.

"Boss? You not look so good," Deekin scratched from somewhere near him. All Solaufein could do was moan in agony at Deekin's toes and press his temples with the heels of his hands.

The pain abated for a moment, but the nausea didn't. "Chosen you are, but not by I," both of the Halasters said as the light eclipsed Solaufein's vision. "I see a life-long shadow growing upon the other . . . But I think you'll do nicely. Fight the Valsharess for me, use your gifts to bring her to a swift end. One year, I give you. One year to kill her, and my geas is released. Flee, and you will die in unimaginable agony. One year . . ."

Solaufein was honestly not aware of much after that. The pain blinded him to his surroundings. He cursed wizards, he cursed his luck, and he cursed Lloth many times. He was distantly aware of Binne still complaining about her arse pain, and still wanted to laugh darkly at her predicament just as she had laughed at his portal-induced nausea, but he was clinically unable to anything but reel in pain. He'd settle for reminding her about it later about as often as she'd reminded him of slaying Berger. At one point, he remembered asking Nathyrra to kill him, and at some other point he know he must have vomited because he tasted bile on his tongue in in spite of his delirium, and the smell of it permeated his nostrils unpleasantly.

When the pain went away finally, a cool touch on his forehead drew his gaze up and into a face he'd seen only in a distant dream. A gentle dhaerow woman with eyes as blue as the sky over Athkatla cradled his face, and smiled. "Welcome, Solaufein," said the lady in a voice that was as soft as her hands. "I have been expecting you."

* * *

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

_Vith…_ah, bugger this nonsense  
_Dobluth…_homeless  
_mzilst z're…_someone who's getting too big for her britches  
_z'orr tizzin…_one o' them tricky ass lizards that crawls up walls and such  
_Xa'huuli jaluk…_something that female drow like to call the males  
_Usstan hass…_dude, chill  
_Og'elend ulu…_like accusing someone of not being drow enough, so like racism inside racism  
_Henot…_Nat is asking why they didn't give this job to an earth elemental  
_Naut l'xsa…_if I have to hear one more word about that stupid flesh golem I'll kill myself  
The 'z'ress' and 'bautha' thingies were different drow fighting styles. One is about big swings and the other is about sneakysneak.


	4. The General

VALEN

Ever since their scoutmaster had left, there'd been a quiet tension amongst the Eilistraeens of Lith My'athar that had set General Valen Shadowbreath's crimson neck hairs on end. For once he didn't want to blame his mood solely on his demonic blood, the primary source of his worst tendencies. The Seer was quieter, he had noticed. The Commander, impossibly more talkative. Everyone seemed visibly on edge and as a result the blue-eyed tiefling had caught himself manifesting small outbursts at anyone who asked him the same thing twice, or forgot their weapon to practice, or talked back to him, or generally irritated him in any way. It amused him a little that he received negative opinion for being a grouch when it was everyone else who made him that way with their palpable anxiety. If everyone hadn't been tip-toeing about him, perhaps it would be easier to avoid them annoying him. If he didn't pick up on the scent of fear in the air in every hallway and around every person, it might not getting to him as much. Maybe, if he wasn't surrounded by _danger_ and the_ constant looming threat of attack_, he'd be in a better mood. It definitely didn't help that Nathyrra was gone.

Halaster was a dangerous wizard by all reckoning. He had read a little about the Blackcloak, and what little he'd read his overactive imagination was able to fill in the grand picture. An infamously insane wizard didn't get to be over a thousand years old by being gullible and easy to trap. Even the idea that they they were attempting to free this wizard from the clutches of a powerful woman with one of the Hells' own arch-devils on a leash made his tail curl. The anxiety was understandable, if annoying. And it felt as though everyone's faith in Nathyrra's abilities had diminished, while his had not. She had volunteered for the mission immediately.

True though, that Nathyrra was their most accomplished scout and had volunteered to lead the company. She was surprisingly reliable for being a former assassin, but unpopular in the city. Valen empathized with her predicament as he recalled his own days as an inter-planar enforcer (one did not get to be Valen's age or survive long in drow society by being gullible and easy to kill). Her occupation left a stain on her reputation and left her mistrusted by many, though Valen had always gotten along quite well with her more so than many of the others. Even the Commander, by far the chattiest person the General had ever had the misfortune to meet, had taken longer to get on his good side. Nathyrra was efficient, ruthless, inquisitive, thorough, and even tempered - all good qualities (that her background caused others to overlook), but nonetheless qualities that were missed back at base.

When he'd first sought sanctuary in the Seer's encampment, Valen's entire world became upended. It had been a . . . Difficult adjustment. Coming to the Underdark and living there in Lith My'athar for the last five months was an even greater adjustment. Though Nathyrra was the most recent convert to the Seer's ranks (directly from the Valsharess' own), Valen believed her conversion to the Seer's goddess was as real as his to the Seer's cause; they'd fought and bled together, after all, and Nathyrra had initially intervened on his behalf with some of the other drow when tensions from misunderstandings began to arise. She'd also been useful in navigating the complex political array of Lith My'athar's alliances, which had since felt strained ever since an altercation in the streets between some of Mae'vir's men and their own.

There'd been an argument, because of course there was. There was always something. Valen's solution - to definitively end the arguing, logically - had been to hit one of them in the face with his very heavily mailed glove and initiate a brawl, so they could just fight it all out of their systems. It didn't get out of hand, but blood was definitely spilled, and he'd been considered entirely at fault. Which was fair, since he had started it, but he resented the implication of Myrune Mae'vir that he was little more than a hound off the Seer's chain. And since then, he'd been asked by the Seer not to enter the city alone, so he'd been stuck with Imloth glued to his side ever since which was yet another thing that constantly annoyed him. In hindsight, he'd realized that Nathyrra or the Seer would have probably tried talking rather than punching, and avoided the whole thing. Diplomacy just wasn't Valen's forte; it'd never been, and it was never going to be. Give him a battle any day, but don't force him to talk to his enemies.

The incident had been as recent as yesterday, and still irked at him. It pissed off the General even more when he noticed everyone seemed to go out of their way to avoid him after it - everyone but the Seer of course, whose demeanor was a staunch rock in a turbulent river to the world around her. Still, as a meeting about a recent scout report amongst the Seer, himself, and the commanders veered off into a discussion about her latest and greatest prophetic dreams, Valen brooded about his fate. It was an old habit he'd yet to break, but in still moments when there was little else of value to contemplate (there was no such thing as prophecy - he admired the woman and believed she was intuitive to a degree, but her senseless devotion to her prophetic gifts was sure to get them all killed one day - call it an intuition of his own), his minded tended down dark and familiar paths.

"I saw a place unlike any I have ever seen, plagued by an eternal winter," the Seer was describing as her brows knitted in her struggle to recall. "A place of howling, ice, and despair . . . And yet the strangest thing - a winged man, soft gray feathers and fair-skinned who lay there, sleeping in the snows. He was dreaming, within my dream . . . And above where he was buried by the snows marched an army of demons and the dead, armed with weapons of war and siege. I believe its meaning to be that we are currently battling a lesser evil - that the greater one is yet biding its time." Her description perked a distant memory of his from a life half-forgotten - and a name that was on the tip of his tongue nearly spilled out before his tongue stilled. He was suddenly reminded that the last discussion they'd all had about her dreams had set Nathyrra with the scouts to Undermountain in search of some kind of mythical drow savior that the Seer insisted would aid them invaluably against the Valsharess with the side-effect of finding and freeing Halaster from the their enemy's clutches by any means necessary. So far, they had yet to return, and no word had been sent back.

Valen's instincts told him that their allies were dead or worse, but a good part of him - the dark sense of humor - felt like it would be a great irony if Halaster happened to just be taking a personal holiday, and the Seer's prophesied savior ended up being an infiltrator sent by the arch-devil. It wouldn't be too far out of the question, by his reckoning; arch-devils could do much worse.

As if sensing his need for a distraction, the ground beneath everyone's feet rumbled during the Seer's speech and she cut off mid-sentence. A grinding noise as earth gnashed against earth sent bits of stone crumbling from the old temple's domed ceiling, causing everyone to take a step back toward the walls to stabilize themselves. He crouched, and an audible crack sounded from the center of the room like a strike of lightning from a bottle. A thread of translucent white light appeared in the air that reeked of magic. Unconsciously he positioned himself between the slight Seer and the light - the magic was unfamiliar, but reeked of power in a way that set his teeth on edge.

The other drow in the room fell into a circle around the growing thread, which expanded suddenly into a wide beam. The light remained translucent for a moment, then shot out in every color of the spectrum and spat out an unfamiliar drow wielding a long, black, wicked sword aloft in one hand. He was dressed in the adamant chain and piwafwi in the colors of one of the Valsharess' ground forces, and Valen's flail moved up in his hand defensively, anticipating an attack.

The tiefling's tail twitched up in confusion when the drow from the portal began to moan in pain and collapsed sideways to the ground in a shaking heap, the black sword falling from his limp fingers with a clatter when he tried to raise it in his hands. He groaned and cursed in Ilythiiri, and began to dry heave over on his hands and knees.

Valen's flail lowered a little bit in his confusion as he tried to blink the spots out of his own eyes. He closed his eyes just in time for the portal to emit another burst of color and emit a loud snap, and when he opened his stinging eyes he saw a kobold wearing several packs on his back, along with a pair of cymbals attached to his side, and was wielding . . . a large book under his left arm. The strange lizard walked right through the room and came to a casual stop to the drow male's knees. The kobold looked around at Valen and his allies as they looked around at each other, wondering what gimmick would pop out of the portal next.

"Uh-oh," the lizard said in a scratchy, high-pitched voice. "Boss, we be in trouble, uh, again! Why we always be in so much trouble? It's all the time with you! I thought gettings crushed by a flying city was bad. Now we in the Underdark in a drow temple—uh. Boss?" The kobold poked the moaning, groaning male drow at his feet. "Are you sick, Boss? You look sick."

The drow, or 'Boss,' reached his hand out to his sword, but the General kicked it away from him which generally disrupted the energy in the whole room. Weapons hissed out of sheaths, crossbows cocked with the creak of wood. "Ele . . . Zuch . . ." The drow muttered under his breath into the floor in a pathetic voice, and didn't even try to defend himself. It was, all in all, a wholly miserable sight that everyone - even the Seer, who was psychic - seemed very alarmed by.

Another sudden crack of light and noise burst from the magic portal and someone came almost literally flying out, back-end-first and skidding to a halt near Valen and Imloth's backpedaling feet as it rolled to its side. The Commander and General stopped as their backs smacked against the walls and they pointed both of their weapons at the rolling, skidding form. It might have been a very different situation entirely if Valen wasn't suddenly distracted by a smaller pop of noise and light as a very non-plussed Imp flapped laconically after the one near his feet and hovered in place, looking bored with its circumstances.

Then, the form at his feet began to scream piercingly high in agony, and let out sobbing cries. "My arse! _My arse!_" They shrieked in a very feminine voice. Hair disguised her face until she rolled over and he got a nasty shock with a whiff of her blood that had stained her chainmail, almost as if she'd died and rolled over into the mess.

Valen's senses went into overdrive as his pupils dilated and a conditioned flare of danger straightened his spine. His pulse pounded in his head and his eyes flared red as his demonic blood woke up from a nap to the smell of devil's blood. "DEMON!" He cried out, and drew his flail back poised to kill. It was none other than a cambion, certainly a half-devil and no doubt a powerful one who reeked of blood and death. "TO ARMS!" He ordered.

The fact that the half-devil was rolled onto her side grabbing her backside in pain didn't register until a split second later when the Seer's clear, stern voice cut in sharply: "Valen, no!" The whole room stilled, and all turned as one to the Sword-dancer. "Stay your hands, these are _not _our enemies! This is not an attack, these people are our friends! I have been expecting them, but . . . Not in this exact manner." Her crystal-clear eyes leveled him with a flat glare that he was helpless to resist.

His flail fell slightly in his hands, even as the enchantment on Devil's Bane surged through his hand at the sight of the howling cambion. "Seer?" If there ever was an appropriate time to use the word flabbergasted, this would be it. He opened his mouth to say something, but then glanced down at the kobold trying in vain to lift the moaning male drow up, and to the half-devil rolling around holding her tail and whining about the state of her backside. The drow collapsed in the kobold's arms and flopped back to the ground just as the half-devil's cries subsided into pained moans. Admittedly, it may have been an over-reaction on his part.

The flapping, bored-looking imp drew his attention by clearing his throat with a officious cough. "Ugh," it grimaced, "must I be forced to endure such a display? Mistress, you are embarrassing yourself," he criticized a surprisingly low, nasal voice.

The devil twisted her form to glare at him while holding her tail delicately in her clawed hand. "Arrgh!" She moaned and hissed. "I'm in pain, Hembercane! Help me, you hackit cockswoggler!" Only about half of the words he processed through her accent, and his brain stumbled when it encountered the last bit.

The imp's eyes rolled. Many of the drow had put their weapons away, although Valen's clench on Devil's Bane remained white-knuckled even as the imp spoke. "As am I in pain, Mistress. Watching you hurts me every day, but I endure because it seems my destiny is to watch you bumble and blunder through your destiny."

The kobold, meanwhile, seemed to give up his attempts at lifting the still-moaning drow and clucked under his breath. He took a quill out of a hidden pocket that seemed somehow already ink-ready, and began to scratch at a blank page in his large notebook. "Yeesh, now the imp be monologuing? Imp . . . Like drama . . . More . . . Than elves . . . And Boss . . . Combined . . ." He seemed to be speaking more to himself, and Valen immediately dismissed the kobold as a threat.

Still, he turned to the Seer with frustrated, glowing red eyes. "Seer, they could be infiltrators," he hissed.

She stared at him with a very simple, not-at-all-frustrated, knowing sort of look that suggested she had a much larger look at an affair that he'd only caught the glimpse of. Somehow her tone suggested the same. "I know they are not infiltrators, Valen, because I am looking at them right now." It was a stern, but very polite rebuke. The male had been reduced to retching miserably again, still on his knees with his forehead pressed to the cool floor as he muttered helplessly into it, while the kobold had finished his notes and left them on the floor while he patted his Boss on the arm gently. The cambion was rolling around clutching her tail and moaning about her arse, and her pet imp flapping inch by inch away from Valen's glare and giving him dirty glances out of the corner of his eyes.

General Shadowbreath cleared his throat and put away his flail under the Seer's gaze. His hand remained near it on his hip, but he wasn't about to disrespect or disobey her. Especially when she made a damn good point.

Another light crack resounded and the beam suddenly disappeared, leaving them all blinking at the sudden shadows. The Eilistraeens let out a collective sigh of relief at the absence of the invasive light. Valen's eyes were the first to adjust, and he was surprised - and pleased, to see Nathyrra standing in the middle of the room, apparently the last to emerge from the obnoxiously bright portal. She alone stood unaffected in the midst of it all, uninjured though her hair was visibly mussed from the air displacement.

Her eyes locked onto his own with amusement. "I can't believe you could shout that word unironically, General," she told him.

He blinked a few times to ascertain it wasn't a hallucination. The scent of magic in the room had begun to fade, and it definitely smelled like her. "Nathyrra?" Poor tiefling; it shouldn't be possible to be flabbergasted twice in one day. Doesn't seem fair.

The Seer let out a relieved sigh. "Nathyrra! Everyone, please, calm down. Do you not recognize one of your own?"

At the Seer's confirmation, the energy in the room completely changed to one of relieved welcome. The tiefling was the only one still tense about the demonic presence, and he remained a little on edge. Still, he eased a bit when Nathyrra approached and gave a little bow of greeting, and the red of his eyes faded back into their natural blue. "Mother Seer, I beg you forgive our unorthodox entrance. I have returned to you ahead of our other scouts with the one from your visions." That surprised and amused Valen quite a bit, because Nathyrra turned to look and gesture to the male drow that was still retching on the floor, sick. "His name is Solaufein, an Eilistraeen, like us! And these are his . . ." Her gaze then turned to the kobold who was scratching at his horns and looking around at everything in the room in fascination and making cooing noises, and to the cambion still crying about her arse that she'd landed on, clutching her tail in her hands. "These people are his . . . Friends." She seemed to taste the Common word slowly, unsure of its pronunciation. "Their current state is the fault of Halaster."

It was a weak introduction; this was not the sight you'd expect of heroes from prophecy. The drow named Solaufein had vomited onto the ground at the end of Nathyrra's statement, which everybody processed unflinchingly just as Imloth began to chuckle. The cambion, meanwhile, cried out, "Dobbering barmy wizard! My ar-har-haaaarse! Why is it always me arse?!"

Solaufein paused in moaning to raise his head blearily and attempt to take stock of the room at an angle that kept his head touching the ground. "Ele zhah ol zuch vith'ez vigh faernen? Someone, please end me," he switched between the two languages interchangeably with an accent somewhat thicker than Imloth's own. Why he seemed to have a grudge against wizards was anyone's guess, but if Valen was going to give it a try he'd put his money on all wizards being far more trouble than they're worth.

"Damn you Halaster, and curse your withered balls with impotence!" The cambion's cry was impassioned, but diminished from her position on the ground. The pages of the kobold's book rustled as he chittered under his breath and jotted down notes with his quill. It seemed like he was repeating everything he heard under his breath and writing it down for documentation. The more these people spoke, the less Valen understood them.

Nathyrra's posture was uneasy, but she remained dignified despite the present company. How she said what she did with a straight face was a question Valen felt pertinent. "I have brought you the Champion from your visions as you commanded, and I have some wonderful news. Oh, as well as some very bad news. Which should I report first?" She asked in a clinical tone.

The Seer's voice was gentle, but her expression remained as stern as it had been earlier when everyone's weapons were drawn. "First, we should make sure our guests are intact. What has happened to them? How did you come to arrive here? I estimated your return would take weeks. The entrance to Undermountain is a journey of four cycles even on a mount. And where are your mounts?"

Seeing as someone had altered the laws of physics and it reeked of magic, Valen would put his money on the wizard. "Ah, that would be part of the bad news. It is a long story, mother Seer—" Nathyrra cut herself off with a pause as her eyes went to the ceiling contemplatively.

The kobold suddenly fell back on his rear rather hard with a loud clatter from his pack when he tried and failed to help his Boss stand up on his own legs again. "Erm, Boss, you is not looking very good. You looks like now Old Boss after he eat too many berry pies and have really bad gas that stink out whole kobold cave, and Deekin one of only ones to not die because he be outside taking pee when it happened." This entire short story that left just . . . So many questions, and the kobold named Deekin uttered in one breath. The General blinked and shared a look with Imloth, both united in silent bafflement and in Imloth's case, growing horror.

Solaufein hissed, "Shut . . . Up . . . Deekin, ai!" His hands went to his head, pushing on his brow as his expression became more pained.

The cambion sobbed loudly and rolled to her side, inadvertently closer to Valen's feet and setting him stepping back only to hit the wall again. He growled a little, instinctively. "Why'd it have to land on me tail! It feels broken!" She whimpered. "The bloody wizard broke me tail! _THE LIGHT OF ME ARSE!_ A pox be on all wizards, Hembercane! You pox 'em all!"

The drow nodded and heaved out to the ground, "Siyo, xsa mina jal . . ." In wretched agreement.

Commander Imloth, to Valen's left, began to chuckle more loudly. "Zhal udos mina wun l'Olath Niar'haanin?" He offered.

Valen was about to offer to help him toss them in the river, but Nathyrra gave them all a very displeased look. The Seer turned to the Commander and smiled. "Nindolen ph'udossta quivveden, Imloth. Do not be rude. Not all are as lucky to know the grace of our language." He sensed a veiled lecture that the Seer was holding back, which was enough to make Imloth emit an amused apology and promised he'd hold his tongue from further snark.

Deekin stepped up to Nathyrra and tapped on her leg to get her attention. The General was surprised to see the drow woman so at ease in the kobold's presence, given the stories he'd heard about some finding kobold a delicacy; she instinctively crouched to Deekin's eye-level to listen to him with genuine attentiveness. "Warlock-lady not looking to good either, drow-lady," the kobold said, pointing at the cambion; that fact that she was a warlock at least explained one of the scents about the female he'd had trouble indentifying; it was eldritch energy, coiled into her aura like a snake. His neck hairs stood impossibly more on end. Or perhaps that was something from the drow male - it was hard to tell with so many scents battling it out in the room. Seemed like everything was setting his teeth on edge . . . "This seem like bad drow place, but not bad people," Deekin continued. "At least they not attacking us yet like the others." His tone suggested that he was surprised by this.

Nathyrra shook her head and gave a light, rare smile. "No, Deekin, they are not bad people. They are my people."

Deekin relaxed visibly. "Oh. They be alright then. You help Boss now, maybe? Oh and goat-lady too, I guess, since she died earlier and all," he added like an afterthought, gesturing vaguely at the still-moaning half-devil. He recalled, distantly, finding that term offensive, but admitted when examining the female's horns that they did somewhat resemble a ram's that curved about her head, though the tip of one had been broken off and filed down at some point. Her 'dying' earlier, as alarming as the casual statement was to hear, at least explained the smell of death and devilish blood. He gritted his teeth and clenched his flail's handle, struggling against what his blood told him to do.

Nathyrra nodded and started to help Solaufein up with Deekin's assistance and together they managed to support him standing. "Mother Seer, can you heal them?" She asked. "Halaster has struck them with a curse that causes them both great pain. It is a geas that binds them to his service, against their will."

"Right in the noggin' an' arse," the cambion grumbled. Imloth twitched in amusement. Having to be quiet seemed to pain him greatly.

"Also Boss be hating portal travels and he be having to do that a lot lately," Deekin explained matter-of-factly. "A lot a lot lately."

Solaufein turned his head vaguely toward the dark elf chiefly supporting him, even though she was significantly shorter than him; the enchanted girdle she wore probably helped, though. "Nathyrra," Solaufein pleaded in a hoarse, tired voice. "Elgg uns'aa," he begged into her shoulder.

The Seer chuckled at his dark plea. "Treemma naut, a l'elamshinae d'udossta quar'valsharess, dos orn naut el yallt." She closed her blue eyes in prayer as the room grew silent to aid in her concentration. After a few moments, she drew up her hands, clenched them, and uttered a quiet praise to Eilistraee and opened them. A glowing, gentle light - far less harsh than the magic from the portal emitted from her palms and hit all four of the visitors, erasing their weariness and injuries. The individuals all glowed a soft silver light before it disappeared, leaving them all visibly relieved and breathing easier.

Solaufein jerked forward and fell to his knees as the pain fell from his face. The Seer helped him off the floor with a gentle hand. "May the grace of our lady of the moon easy your burden. Welcome, Solaufein. I have been expecting you." He took her hand with some hesitation and stood. He looked down at her with eyes more burgundy than red in equal parts recognition and confusion. He was taller than other drow, now that Valen began to assess him, but shorter than himself. His hair was cut into a shaggy warrior's stripe that looked as battle worn as he himself was, the sides only with a faint fuzz, and he seemed strangely at ease in the foreign surroundings. Now closer, the tiefling could identify the smell of something like earth and pepper that tingled at his nostrils, and prickled on the back of his hands unpleasantly. It wasn't as bad as he reaction to the warlock's presence, but it stuck out as unusual.

Nathyrra came up behind Solaufein with a sly smile. "Do you still wish to die?" She asked. "I have a fine dagger you may borrow, if you wish. I sharpen it daily, so I can guarantee its quality." She seemed amused and even a little intrigued at the idea, which Valen had come to understand was just because drow have a strange sense of humor. He felt his shoulders relax a little in reflex at Nathyrra's familiar manner; she either had him pegged and dismissed as a threat, or was familiar enough with him to be casual. It boded well, though did not put Valen completely at ease.

Solaufein grunted. His voice was a lightly accented low tenor, indicative of his Underdark roots. "I think Enserric would be . . . Upset if I used someone else's dagger. I am better. I will live, thank you. Whatever the wizard did depleted me—"

"Jealous?!" A new tinny voice barked, startling Valen and sending his hand down to his flail for reassurance. Everyone's eyes sought out the floor where Valen had kicked the drow's sword, where the black blade began to emit sparkling red depths that seemed to crackle with lively energy. The sword itself was the source of the voice, which is about when Valen realized that nothing was ever going to be normal or easy again. Not that his life had ever really been normal or easy, but at least up until that point there'd been a lull of routine violence. Or, at least there weren't any talking swords before that moment. Why anyone would desire a sword with a talking personality was beyond him. It seemed like torture. "Fah! I'm not jealous of other swords! Who said anything about being jealous?! I'm a shape-shifting _magical sword!_ What more could you want in a weapon?! I do _all_ the things! You know that knife is just going to disintegrate in the sun anyway. Most people would be happy to have someone as useful as me around. I'm permanently sharp, I'm witty, and I'm shiny. Any dragon would be lucky to have me in his hoard!"

Solaufein snorted unprofessionally in derision - it seemed like he had a very long day. "Your word. Ignore him, he has been in a petty mood ever since I killed a wizard without him." The sword let out an audible, tinny huffing noise before growing silent and still, the red tint fleeing from the blade. "And now he is pouting," Solaufein pointed out with an eye roll.

The kobold scratched at his journal and muttered under his breath. "Enserric . . . Be jealous . . . Of other swords."

The cambion stopped groaning and rolled back onto her knees to stand up, still holding her tail somewhat delicately but clearly and visibly surprised that she was no longer in pain. Though she was slightly hunched at the moment, now that she stood he could tell that she was even to his height, with dusky red skin, nearly amber-colored eyes, and a messy braid of dark hair that brushed her shoulders. "Bane's balls, that was heinous!" Her expression twisted into one of confusion and a little disgust. She shook all over in a dramatic shiver, as if her body were attempting to shake off its own sensations. "Oi, why's it smell like an angry tana'ri in—" her eyes started at the edge of the room and took in everything swiftly before settling on the very angry General barely a foot away from her. She took a step back instinctively, responding to the subconscious threat, but her expression was not one of fear. Across her features spread a inexplicable delight. "Oh my!" She stared at Valen openly, appreciatively, and blinked several times as an irrepressible grin exposed her short canines. Her tail curled around her hand.

Valen felt himself flushing reflexively in the silence and giving her back a fierce glare, feeling his tail whip in irritation and thwack inadvertently against the wall behind him. The imp added to the tension by clearing his throat again, unfortunately reminding the General that he existed and drawing his ire. "Mistress, must I be forced to endure such . . . Illustrious company?" The imp's bald head cocked repeatedly in Valen's direction as he started edging further and further away from the tiefling, out of flail-range.

He let out a growl in the back of his throat that was straight from the caged beast inside. "Keep rattling imp," Valen rasped. His eyes flashed red again. "See where it gets you." General Shadowbreath's hand twitched near his flail, itching to destroy something after all that had happened in the last few minutes. All the conflicting scents and pheromones in the room were enough to keep him on edge.

The cambion turned away from the General and fixed a glare on the dour imp, who blinked in the face of his mistress' ire impassively. "Stuff it Hem, you havering pisswomble!" She inexplicably commanded. "E's probably twice the demon you are and I'm at least twice the demon he is! Now get out've here, you're not bloody helpin' anybody! You're a sour grape, you are! Go-go on now, fuck off! Get!" She waved her one available arm at him dismissively a few times before the imp seemed to take the hint, or the magic kicked in, and he was banished back to his home plane. She limped over to Solaufein with her tail still delicately held in hand rather than go back to staring at Valen as she had before, and seemed completely oblivious of all the eyes following her. "Solly, you look like shite," she observed in a complimentary tone with a smile. "What happened to you? And more importantly me, as last I remember I got shot in the arse-bone by two Halasters with what felt like a Power Word of Pain."

Valen had so many questions about this situation now that it seemed like questions were all he had - and every time someone opened their mouth to try to explain what had happened, it just resulted in more unanswered questions. The warrior-striped drow, for his part, seemed half-heartedly annoyed by her comment judging only by his tone; it was the the same tone Imloth took with Valen when the Commander finally had enough of losing to the tiefling at sparring. "You recall correctly, and fuck you, what have I said about calling me that?" Solaufein stopped to think for a second with a distracted expression while everyone else seemed a like shocked by the almost casually rude exchange. "A moment — is piss-womble a real word?" He wondered. He looked to Nathyrra, bafflingly. "Did I hear that right?"

Nathyrra didn't have an answer and seemed just as distracted by this subject as Solaufein. "I . . . Have never heard of it, but my knowledge of Common idioms is sorely lacking. I'm sorry, what does 'fuck you' mean?"

The Seer, he saw, tried and failed to interject with a throat-clearing noise, only for Deekin to perk up and join the exchange. "Oh!" The kobold looked to Nathyrra. "Deekin hear a sailor say that to him once!" The kobold then turned to the cambion with the clutched-tail. "Actually, Deekin think he heard a sailor call him that once."

The cambion blinked her bright eyes twice, slowly. "Huh, I was sure I made that one up." She looked down to consider the kobold with a trembling lip.

It was Solaufein that started chuckling darkly first, causing the cambion to burst out in synchronous laughter that no one else joined, although it did make Valen's lip twitch since he was sure that 'pisswomble' was actually Cager insult, or slang for a piss-rag, but he wasn't about to correct anyone. The strange duo quickly composed themselves and Solaufein finally turned his full attention on the Seer, who was beginning to seem a little lost. "I apologize. Who are you? Where am I? How do you know my name?"

The Seer smiled brightly, her blue eyes almost twinkling in the temples' magelight. "We've met, though perhaps you do not recall clearly when. It was in a shared dream, given to us by our goddess." Though Valen had not noticed it before, Solaufein had worn a pendant that had fallen out of his armor somewhere mid-vomit in the shape of Eilistraee's moon with a thin sword emblem superimposed, tied around his neck with a length of leather. The Seer's fingers reached forward to grace the crescent on his chest, drawing out a small and startled gasp from the male. "Our luminous lady has sent you here in our moment of direst need. I am called the Seer, and I and all of my people here serve Eilistraee, just as you do." This seemed to stun the drow into silence. "We have all descended from our grove to Lith My'athar to oppose the Valsharess. You have met Nathyrra already, and this is the General of our forces, Valen Shadowbreath." Valen gave them all a hard and assessing stare, betraying nothing. "Next to him is our Commander Imloth," she gestured and the male preened, "and the woman beside him is Cazna, one of our chief scouts, and this man is Elendrin, head of my personal guard." All except for Valen nodded and bowed upon being introduced, gestures Solaufein all returned.

The man still seemed stunned and turned again to Nathyrra last. "Do'zil al? Gracel'ec della uns'aa."

She nodded solemnly in response. "I could not trust you at first. Things are . . . different now. Before, there was a possibility that you worked with the Valsharess. I am certain now that you are not." She said this with a perfectly straight face without even glancing at the colors of his armor; though Valen supposed it might have been a disguise amongst the Valsharess' forces. It made more sense than everyone willfully ignoring evidence in front of them, at least.

The Seer interjected, "My lady has seen fit to grant me a form of sight beyond eyes, into current and future events."

"You know the future?" Solaufein's eyes gleamed with intrigue. "How far can you see into?" It seemed a bizarrely specific question to Valen, in light of the circumstances. He frowned as he watched the exchange, and the conspiracy theories tallied up in his head one by one.

"My dreams are not specific to times and places. It is up to me to interpret their meaning. I have seen all of Abeir-Toril engulfed by darkness and forced to bend knee to a false goddess. This will certainly be our fate if we cannot stop the Valsharess from taking Lith My'athar. Do you know of her?" The Seer seemed to be firmly keeping the conversation on track, assessing rightfully the lot of them as being easily distracted.

"I have told him a little," Nathyrra informed her.

"An ex-priestess trying to take over the surface from Menzoberranzan styling herself as the new Lloth," Solaufein distantly recalled, his eyes lingering on the statue in the nave of the temple which was - while no longer dedicated to Lolth, still in the shape of the spider-demon-goddess. "She is not as interesting as a modest female with visions of the future who dances under the moon in the nude." Though his eyes yet were trained on the statue, his flattery was clearly aimed at the Seer who reacted rather inappropriately, Valen thought, to the comment with a quiet smile.

"That is but one of many of my privileges, as a servant of our lady."

The cambion's eyes had started to linger too long on the General again, making him twitch in reaction. "Trying to take over the surface sounds like something a drow priestess'd be crazy enough to try. Er, present company excluded. You folks seem alright." She glanced over at the Seer, addressing her brightly.

The Seer calmly nodded. "Yes. Thank you. I was privileged to see her rise to power. She was from one of the smaller houses . . ." The Seer went on a rather short explanation of the Valsharess' rise to power, and their recent intelligence on the presence of an arch-devil at her side. In the midst of it, Cazna and Imloth left to go about their duties, but he felt ill at ease leaving the Seer alone with outsiders, even with Nathyrra present. He did not trust them, even if she did, and it rankled at him to hear her so openly give them the intelligence they'd bled for. Who they were was even in question still, as far as he was concerned. Throughout, the kobold quietly and faithfully took notes, apparently documenting the entire encounter. He'd never even met a literate kobold, let alone a kobold scribe.

At the end of it the cambion scratched at her broken horn. "What's it with you elves and you following your dreams?" Her tone was honest bafflement, and it was a sentiment even Valen could unexpectedly sympathize with. She seemed to have as much instinctive distaste for the subject of dreams and visions as he did. A typical reaction from most people that weren't elves. "You know you're not supposed to take an idiom literally?" Solaufein performed a magnificent eye roll in response which even Deekin commented upon, audibly declaring it superior to all the previous eye rolls as he wrote down his notes, which made the odd pair groan in unison. "That's precisely how you all get mixed up in silly situations like this! The Valshireen wouldn't really be able to conquer all the surface - sure she'd kill a bunch of folks, but she'd piss off the Lords of Waterdeep _and _the Hand of Bane! Imagine - Khelben Blackstaff and Fzoul Chembryl finally united under a common cause. Suppose that means we all might become conscripted Baneites, but that would never really last for long."

"I can see how one of your nature might be wary of such subjects," the Seer interjected delicately.

The cambion's eyes narrowed. "'My' nature?' You referrin' to all the demons in the room or just me?" She seemed a little hurt by her tone but maintained an apathetic air.

Valen felt himself get a little angry around the eyes. The scent of devil blood was still heavy in the air, and it seemed to be coating her armor in places. "Watch who you call a demon," he warned in a low tone, struggled to hold back the beast in him that craved violent release.

Her reaction was the opposite of the one he wanted. She grinned and her pupils widened a degree. "There's a bit of the tanar'ri I was smellin' earlier. Vicious!" She seemed inappropriately pleased with herself.

The Seer was as measured as usual, her voice as patient as always. "No, Binne Ofgren," she addressed, which seemed to set the hackles on the cambion, "I speak to your more human nature which is prone to doubt, but also seeks reason." Her tone changed to one of amusement. "I am a Seer. Your friend and I shared a dream. I have many dreams of the future - even occasionally the past that Eilistraee has granted me, in her grace. It is up to me to interpret their meaning. I have seen you before even if you have not seen me, and that is how I know your name. Whether or not my visions are truly given by our goddess is irrelevant, as I have seen them come true today. I believe that we are here for a purpose, and that purpose is to save as many lives as we can from the Valsharess. Now that you are both unfortunately bound by geas by the Blackcloak to slay our common enemy, we are moved to action. This city is the last outpost of our people in the Underdark that the Valsharess does not hold sway over. Here we must make our stand, for in a few months she will undoubtedly attempt to drive us out. Here, you, you," and she looked to Deekin, and then Solaufein, "and you have all answered our call for aid. I have asked my people to join me so that we may defy her, and if we fall, so will the rest of Toril after us. She will overtake Waterdeep and use its riches to plunder and rule the Prime Plane as a goddess in her own right. With an arch-devil at her side, she even has an excellent chance of success."

Binne Ofgren, the strangest cambion Valen had ever seen, scratched her dusky horns with a clawed hand as she processed this information painfully slowly. "Oh. An arch-devil sounds - that - that sounds very bad. Why didn't you say that earlier? That's very, _very_ bad. Er. Which one, do you think? Suppose it don't matter. Any one 'o 'em is as bad as any other."

"We do not know which one," Nathyrra informed her. "And she did say it earlier."

"Oh." Her hand fell to her side. "Well, I wasn't listening." At least she was honest.

Deekin let out a stressed noise. "Deekin not be liking the sound of all of this. Drow not historically kind to kobolds and usually eats us for dinner. Also, arch-devils sound mean even though Deekin not, uh, totally sure what they be. But they sounds bad. Do they be like tall, regular devils? But evil-er? Deekin regretting not reading more on demonology til now." As the kobold rambled, he scratched at the scales on his head absently.

The red skinned fiendling offered, "try to imagine a fourteen-hand, much smarter, more cloven hoofed version of me with bigger horns and spikes and such, and very into eating kobolds."

". . .Deekin want to say something, but it be mean."

"Quiet, you."

"That reminds me," Nathyrra interjected, "Deekin, you need to stay away from the kitchens during your stay here. We will have spare quarters prepared for you by tomorrow, although two might have to share."

The cambion shrugged. "I'll rest in a bloody barn if you give me a pile o' hay. Though it would help if, uh," and she turned her eyes on the still-glaring Valen, "the pretty blues would stop glaring at me. E's makin' me blood run colder than the wind in the Dale!" For the first time since she'd been healed, she seemed visibly uncomfortable.

Valen let out a grunt as his suspicion started making its own farm on the surface. The Seer smiled at him. "Our General is cautious by nature. Time must pass before you can prove your intentions and unfold your trust in one another. And it is vital that you work to do so, for we must all be united in working to stop the Valsharess and free you and Solaufein of this burden."

"I'll not argue if there's killin' to be done," Binne Ofgren chirped.

Solaufein clapped Binne on the shoulder once gently. "I am sure there will be plenty of things for us to fight along the way," he assured her. He turned back to the Eilistraeen priestess as his hand fell from her shoulder. "I stand with you, Seer. Fate has brought me here, I think, to collide with the Valsharess."

Strangely, the cambion chuckled out, "or the stench of it lured you here."

Solaufein's lip twitched up in amusement. "Or that."

Deekin wondered aloud, "what smell like pepper?" He sniffed again. "And . . . wet dirt?"

"Coriander, actually," Binne corrected. "Maybe it's just the smell of the Underdark." Her tail had long fallen out of her hands and moved naturally, if a little stiffly, betraying her interest as she stared at Valen once more. "I'm Binne Ofgren," she introduced herself pleasantly, "by the way. Pleased to meet you, General Shadowbreath."

He felt himself growling again as his suspicion harvested its first crop of surface-corn.

The Seer sheltered their new guests with her arms and ushered them along towards the staircase at the back of the main chamber, which led up to the priestess' old living quarters. Nathyrra turned to leave with a short goodbye in the direction of the library. "Don't mind him dear," she addressed the cambion. The General followed behind, unwilling to leave the Sword-dancer's back unguarded in the presence of untested strangers. "Valen is very protective of me, and suspicious of newcomers." He snorted. "Rightfully so, for we have faced several battles already and endured sabotage attempts from almost every corner these last few months. It has been a harrowing time for us all. Just a few weeks ago, one of our converts proved to be an infiltrator and made an attempt on my life."

Solaufein gave the General an askance look that Valen couldn't decipher and nodded. "Abbanelith," he stated. The cambion turned to glare at him uncomprehendingly. "Standard politics," he explained.

Assassination was fairly standard for drow by Valen's reckoning, but Binne looked relieved by this rather than appropriately appalled as one might expect. "Oh. I thought you were accusing me of having sex with goats again."

Solaufein seemed amused by this baffling remark and chuckled. It was strange to see a drow laugh so much; they were humorless by reputation, but Imloth was the only one he'd met so far with a developed of humor, even if it was a bit morbid and at times immature. The one time he'd been to the public house, Valen had been struck by the carefree and open laughter that rolled out onto the streets. Or perhaps it was merely the Eilistraeens who were joyous; he'd yet to see any of the Lith My'athar residents do much but scowl at him (or, in the case of a handful of females, gain an inordinate interest in him).

They continued up the steps toward the rounded corridor of living quarters. The Seer's was at the end of the hall; Valen had his own downstairs, but rarely spent time in it since he required little sleep and preferred not being left alone to his thoughts. He hadn't been aware that there were any guest rooms to spare, but given the Seer's visions, he supposed she had prepared one weeks in advance for the visitors. Her silken white robes rustled gently against her ankles as she stopped before an unfamiliar door, and a smile spread across her features when she looked to the newcomers. "Just so. We must share Lith My'athar with others of our people, who have floundered in Lloth's absence. We've been lucky to have a few converts, but most of them view us as interlopers and wish us gone. They have less love of the Valsharess than they do us, and the enemy of my enemy becoming my ally is a common Underdark idiom. Here, expect peace and quiet, but out in the city you should be wary and not walk unguarded." Her expression became serious and she seemed to direct this more at the kobold and cambion than Solaufein, who continued to seem nonplussed by everything he saw. He seemed to have become - as Valen had seen with everyone, himself included - instantly comfortable in the presence of the Seer.

"And stays away from the kitchens?" Deekin chirped, adjusting his pack.

"That would be wise, yes, little one," the Seer nodded. She gestured to the door, which her bodyguard Elendrin opened and bowed obsequiously for them. "We will prepare more room for you tomorrow, but for tonight you will have to share. I hope you do not mind."

The half-devil wasted no time marching through the wide open door without any preamble and collapsed with a clink of chainmail on top of a large bed that groaned beneath her weight. "This bleedin' box made of mushrooms? Och, I'm too tired to care. Too long of a day. Days . . . Weeks . . . Coupla years . . ." Her voice was muffled as she lay face-down. Valen glanced away out of habit when she rolled over and started tearing off her mail without regard to modesty, and tossed it on the ground.

Solaufein, unperturbed, looked to the Seer. "Xal usstan telanth xuil dos wun l'kre'tan?" He questioned. His tone was curious, but his entire bearing spoke to his exhaustion.

She smiled at him. "Udos inbal mzilt ulu telanth d'Solaufein. But now, rest. Our Lady has smiled upon our meeting."

The drow male bowed, his piwafwi sweeping the ground behind his feet. "Alulove, Malla yatharil," Solaufein bade formally and followed Deekin into the guest chamber. The door closed behind them just as Valen heard the cambion begin to snore.

Valen stared at the Seer with a hard expression after the door closed. She returned his gaze amused, and said nothing, only chuckling. "Good night, dear Valen," she told him. "We will speak more when our guests awaken of our plans." She nodded at Elen, who followed her to her chambers. Valen grumbled under his breath. The others had parted already, and he was alone with his suspicions. His instincts demanded he find a guard for their guests; eventually he cornered one of the scouts wandering the halls and commanded him to stand watch while he went and got some shut-eye himself. He felt, in his bones, that the following day(s) was(were) going to be long.

His sleep was blissfully dreamless, though short. It took him a few moments to recall the nonsense of the previous evening. General Shadowbreath dressed and donned his customized armor in irritation at his circumstances; knowing his luck, the Seer would no doubt task him with watching over the newcomers in the coming days. He certainly wouldn't trust anyone other than himself or Nathyrra with the job, and she had other work to be done; his training of the soldiers, Imloth could handle. She'd been particularly stern with him about her safety ever since he'd insisted on securing her a guard at all times, since the last assassination attempt. In all fairness, by the Seer's reckoning, she had been dodging such attempts her entire life and was hardly helpless in battle. In his defense, she didn't know what she was talking about when it came to demons. He didn't know what to make of their guests, but he absolutely and completely doubted (now that he'd slept on it, he was doubly certain of it) that the half-devil's appearance was a timely coincidence.

"What do you mean, 'runny?' That is a new word, for me." Imloth's chatter floated distractedly over Valen's own thoughts, which arrested his attention with its randomness. He and Nathyrra had been speaking and practicing their Common outside near the practice grounds when he found the two sparring in the early part of the day, exchanges new tools and tricks.

"Wh-what?" Valen stuttered, blinking.

"It's how it was described to me by Solaufein," Nathyrra reported, looking just as confused as they were. "It means that the way time works is different in Undermountain. There are places, I am told, where it seems to stretch or somehow move slowly compared to how time passes in the Inn situated on its entrance. Some strange effect of Halaster's enchantment, or residual madness from his enchantment, I presume."

Valen was unable to suppress the guffaw that erupted from his gut. "Inn situated on the—W-what berk would put Inn on the entrance of an insane wizard's death-dungeon?"

Imloth nodded in agreement of some unvoiced thought. "Classic rivvin. I have to visit this place someday, it sounds too good to be true."

Nathyrra nodded. A somewhat shy, rare smile graced her face. "I'm told it's a popular tourist destination by Deekin. The more adventurers that die from it, the more people want to plunder it."

"That's completely barmy," the General decided firmly, though a feeling of admiration welled up in him towards the odd surfacers who would make a career upon uncertain death. "Though it does sound like it might be fun to explore," he admitted. "Just not at the risk of death."

Her lips twisted into a radiant grin. "It's much worse. People actually pay money to go inside knowing they will probably die. If the myriad traps do not kill you, then the residents of the dungeon will."

"I cannot imagine a self-respecting dhaerow paying to go inside a spider and trap-filled dungeon to save a mad wizard," Imloth mused. "Savior or no, it's just not something a smart male would do. He must be an Eilistraeen. Or at least as mad as the wizard."

Nathyrra's lips fell into a purse as she considered how to respond to this. Her hesitation made Valen huskily laugh out loud, startling the two. "Don't tell me you actually believe he's some kind of savior. I need at least one of you to be realistic with me. I can't be the only one in this camp following their senses instead of their dreams."

"I'm not saying he is one," she quickly protested, eyebrows furrowing. "That being said, from all I have seen so far, if anyone has a chance to blindly stumble upon the exact weapon that will help us kill the arch-devil and the Valsharess in one go, it is probably Deekin. I have seen him kill enemies with a song. A song," she repeated slowly for emphasis and clasped her hands together studiously.

The Commander tossed back his silver-haired head in consideration of the ceiling. "I would pay whatever amount of gold asked of me to see that," he decided, after a moment's deliberation.

It surprised him that a drow would let his servants do his fighting for him, though Valen had seen little of the man and felt foolish speaking of things he didn't know. "How many days were you in their company?" He asked the scoutmaster.

"Only one day, though we tracked them through the tunnels for at least three," Nathyrra replied. "I know little of them so far. I have never met anyone quite like them. Deekin is far more than his appearance belies, Solaufein is almost as deadly with that sword of his as you are with your flail and has no love of Lloth, and Binne is as formidable as she is incapable of deception. I also feel as though I could spend a century in their company and still they would surprise me. I would say he is unlike most of our people I have met, and in many ways he has a quiet wisdom and subtle humor that reminds me much of the Seer."

"Wait, it took you that long to find Halaster?" Imloth was surprised.

She shook her head. "It took us that long to track them. They were captives for about a week. Akordia, whom I did not know well, captured and led them further into unfamiliar tunnels. Though they were weakened from imprisonment, the three slew her and most of her dek'za while many of my men died and I was incapacitated. We were met with more resistance than prepared, although after the battle Solaufein resurrected Imrys and Solin. Zi'na and the others did not rise. We made a cairn for them there . . . And I sent the survivors ahead while we freed the wizard, though due to unforeseen circumstances we arrived here ahead of them."

Imloth had bowed his head and closed his eyes, perhaps in contemplation of the fallen. "That clearly did not go according to plan," the Commander muttered.

Nathyrra laughed lightly, shortly, just the once. It did not sound bitter, though it escaped him how the situation was funny in any way. "No, and it did not help matters that the wizard did not want to be freed. And there were two Halasters, which none of the books mentioned. He wanted to kill everyone but—" Nathyrra cut herself off suddenly, as if she didn't want to continue. "I convinced him otherwise," she summarized abruptly.

It explained somewhat their sorry state when they had been transported in front of the Seer in the Temple. Valen shook his head in derision, knowing that what his imagination was filling the blanks of her story with was probably mild to the reality. Drow had a gift for understatement. "Tch. Wizards."

"Indeed. From where does he come?" Imloth queried. "I had trouble placing his accent."

She shrugged, the well-made blackened hide of her armor not so much as creaking with the movement. "I know not. He has likely lived on the surface for a while, as it seems Deekin wrote a book about his and Solaufein's first adventure. His accent puzzles me."

Valen swore. "Every time I hear about something this kobold has done, I have more questions and less answers. How is that possible?"

"You'll get used to it," she promised.

"Have you read it?" asked the Commander.

"The book? No. Deekin gave me a copy, but I have not had the time."

"It is the half-devil that concerns me," Valen interjected with a frown. "What do you know of her?"

Nathyrra blinked once, her expression faintly surprised. Her eyes became distant as her mind traveled in search of information. "Very little. She is from the surface and to the north, and they have not known each other as long. There is remarkable trust amongst them all, fueled by mutual hardship. She is full of many fascinating colloquialisms, but that is all I know. Are you upset by something?"

The tiefling rolled his eyes; he could always trust Nathyrra to put linguistics before everything else. "He's been angry for days," Imloth confided in her to the General's chagrin. "It has nothing to do with anything related to do with the a'temra, because he knows that would be hypocritical of him to say so."

Valen felt a growl form in his chest that he had to stifle. "You do not know their kind like I do," he said in a low voice. "This has the machinations of Baator written all over it!"

Nathyrra considered him. "I think it is the machinations of Halaster. He struck them both with a geas to kill the Valsharess within a year. I believe even if this had not happened, Solaufein would have helped us had we asked, and his friends would have followed him here by their choice. Either way, the Seer believes they can help, and I trust her judgment. She has a way of knowing people better than they know themselves. If she has chosen to place her trust in them, then I will too."

He couldn't disagree with Nathyrra's assessment and fell quiet once more as she and Imloth continued speaking in a low voice. It troubled him that the Seer had never mentioned a half-devil (or kobold) in her visions, though she had spoken of a male drow warrior and was sparse with the description. It could have been any one of her men, for all any of them knew. Aside from Nathyrra's odd endorsement, there was no reason to trust them yet beyond what the Seer's courtesy demanded from him. So, the bare minimum it would be, until further notice.

After a while, Nathyrra tossed her hair over her shoulder and informed them that she had reports to study and the Commander retreated to his training duties. Valen returned to the temple and headed up the stairs to knock on the Seer's door, and entered as her guard opened it up in response to her voice trilling a welcome inside. The priestess' eyes lit up with a smile at the sight of him, drawing a gentle smile from the tiefling in response. "Good morning, Valen," she greeted. "Tea?" She gestured to a full pot of steaming, fragrant tea that rested on her table in front of a fireplace of black stone that was lit, emitting a low intensity heat and giving the room a subtle light.

He tiled his head in a polite decline. "No thank you. Have our guests risen yet?" He asked, getting straight to the point.

The Seer hummed. "Not that I know of. I would let them rest - though would you mind telling the guard to send them my way once they're roused? There is much to discuss." He nodded and turned on his heel. The Seer's voice stopped him before he left the room. "And Valen?" She added in a questioning tone. He turned to face her. "Try and be civil. They have given us no reason yet to distrust them, and we need them to trust us if we're to succeed. I'm counting on you."

Valen was fairly annoyed that everyone was lecturing him on the subject of trust when it hadn't been too long ago that he'd been the subject of everyone's distrust. True, the Seer had never treated him any differently from the day they'd met, but she was the exception, not the rule. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and nodded instead, keeping her words in mind as he headed toward the guest quarters where they'd left the party. Hopefully, without the scent of the devil's blood cloying the air, he'd be able to get through the day without incident.

Cazna had left one of her own on guard duty, a tired-looking drow in leathers who looked very relieved when Valen relieved her of her duty. He decided that by 'civil' the Seer probably meant that he wasn't supposed to barge in on any doors or yell at anyone as much as he might want to, so he gritted his teeth, listened for sounds of stirring on the other side. When he heard low voices speaking, he knocked politely on the door and waited for a response.

"I gots it!" The kobold's scratchy, thin voice chimed out and there was the sound of scales clinking and something being knocked over before the door was pried open a crack. "Oh, it be goat-man," the kobold chirped, causing Valen's jaw to set and teeth to grind involuntarily. "Hi, goat-man!" The kobold scratched at the scales on his head with one of his claws before turning his head to look over at something beyond sight. "Boss, people for you."

"Let him in," Solaufein's low voice responded automatically, and Deekin opened the door. Valen marched into the quarters and bore witness to one of the stranger sights of his already strange life - there was the cambion, sitting on the floor cross-legged with her back to the edge of the bed, eyes closed and a contented smile on her face as the drow male threaded his fingers through her wet hair into neat braid between her horns. He barely glanced up at the imposing tiefling, merely nodding in hello before focusing on his hands again. Deekin wore his armor while the others wore linen, blatantly unguarded, and a part of Valen wanted to criticize the two for their lack of forethought. This was the Underdark, after all.

Binne's amber eyes flashed open wide when she heard him enter. "If it isn't General Paranoia!" She greeted with a smile, irking Valen. Solaufein tsked and pushed her head forward, tucking her chin in as her reaction had disrupted his progress.

Valen chose to ignore the albeit somewhat clever (must not let Imloth ever find out about it) nickname and directed his statement at Solaufein. "The Seer wishes to speak with you as soon as you are ready," he intoned, getting straight to the point.

Solaufein nodded, eyes focused on his work. He pushed the cambion's head forward at an angle sharper to tie the braid off. "Almost done . . . Xunor - complete." He stood and stretched while the cambion touched the inside braid looking pleased with herself, and pulled a few strands from near her ears beneath her horns forward.

"Zoo-noor," she repeated slowly, like she was tasting the word.

"No, you must be softer, _xu_nor," he corrected. "As in Zhentil." She repeated it under her breath a few times as he finally looked at the impatient tiefling. "Lead on," he offered and gestured to the door.

The half-devil and kobold trailed after and had little to add to the discussion with the Seer, which was mostly an iteration of their options. They ultimately needed to cut off the Valsharess' supplies, allies, and gain allies of their own - none of these would be easy tasks as remote and politically divided as Lith My'athar was. It was very likely they would face trouble within their own walls, given how prone to in-fighting and politicking the Houses were. With an illithid pod to the north that had already allied with the Valsharess, and a beholder den to the north-east that was reportedly in talks with their enemy, most of the great Houses of the drow city were in conflict with one another over who to side with. While none of them wished to throw themselves on the Valsharess' so-called mercy, none of them had any love (or hope) for the Eilistraeens. Together, they were all that was left of the free drow of the Underdark. They had everything to gain, and everything to lose.

Solaufein, now that he wasn't retching on the floor and in possession of full faculties, seemed to know what he was about. The illithid the warrior deemed too risky to confront in their current state, for they needed to wait until they possessed an advantage in a negotiation. No one wanted to face the mind-flayers in battle if it was at all avoidable; in Valen's experience, diplomacy with such creatures was just as potentially deadly. The beholder den was less likely to be a diplomatic venture and apparently the Valsharess had stolen his gear when he arrived in Waterdeep, and it would take time before he could make up for that loss of magical protection from their many eyes. After that, Valen had brought his conversations with the Boatman, Cavallas, to the table when their options seemed limited - of islands across the Dark River, and strange things happening on them. One, rumored to be habited by strange golems and the other by strange elves, possible allies in both cases and both likely to be targets of the Valsharess, who sought a foothold in the region.

The other two seemed to instinctively obey Solaufein except when they had suggestions of their own; he asked for access to the city and market so they might recover from their battles in Undermountain before leaving anywhere, but they all agreed along with the Seer that the islands were their best current choice for progress. The kobold, in a bag of holding, carried most of what they'd stolen from the dungeon to make up for their losses. To Valen's chagrin but expectation, the Seer volunteered his services as a guide with the implicit instruction of keeping Solaufein alive - as Nathyrra had other duties. Thus, he was stuck on more-or-less permanent surfacer guard duty. He was, at least, allowed in the city again without supervision, at the cost of providing that supervision to a group of strangers and potential interlopers. It grated at him as much as it confused him, that the Seer would risk her own safety - the benefit of having him at her side - for the sake of these strangers from her dreams.

He chose to wait outside their door and pace impatiently while they donned and sorted the rest of their equipment. If it weren't for the haircut and the words that came out of his mouth, Solaufein would've fit right in with any of the forces in Lith My'athar in a piwafwi and adamantine mail. He didn't exactly seem comfortable in it, and it didn't really match the leather boots he wore, but it did seem to suit his coloring. The cambion's armor had been fairly mangled and bloodstained from their last adventure and switched out for another set of bluish scales that fit better that Deekin had appeared to be hoarding in his bag of holding. Bright-eyed and ready, they made a more formidable sight than they did tired, broken, and retching yesterday. As he swallowed his chagrin and led the trio to the doors of the Temple out into the city, Solaufein stopped and gave the General a pointed look. "What?" He gritted out.

The drow hesitated before answering. "I thank you for your help," he offered, "though it is unnecessary."

Valen bristled. In the quiet of the temple and without the distraction of the others, he could sense that something he'd detected when the man had stumbled out of that portal - some scent that tingled the nose. He couldn't decide if it was pleasant or unpleasant, but his inability to identify it didn't help his paranoia about the group at all. "The Seer has asked me to," he explained, keeping his temper in careful check.

Solaufein's expression was an impassive, calm contrast to the tiefling who seemed to constantly find himself boiling under the surface whenever he was too near this group. Her gaze (and the kobold's) flitted between the General and the drow curiously throughout the exchange. "And you always do as she asks," Solaufein stated it, although it was clearly a question.

"Usually," Valen admitted dryly, "though not always in the manner she asks me to. In this case? Yes. I'd rather keep my own eye on you than risk someone else's." It was a good excuse, for an off the cuff response, and it made sense in his head. Why trust someone else when he could easily suss them out with close contact?

Solaufein's eyes widened in understanding. "You do not trust me," he realized. He seemed to find something about this funny, and started chuckling.

"Well, we are a suspicious lot to look at," Binne shot in with a matching amused grin, making Valen's teeth grit.

"It is not that," the drow answered her, reining in the laughter. "It is - I feel now that am finally amongst my own people - truly back in my homeland."

She frowned. "How's that funny?"

"In . . . The context," Solaufein said after a moment of thought. "When I first left the Underdark, you see, it was in the company of infiltrators disguised as dhaerow. Now I am undisguised, but accused of infiltrating."

"I am not accusing you of anything," Valen defended. "You've done nothing wrong so far."

In the background, the kobold's quill scratched and the cambion laughed. Solaufein shrugged. "Your trust is irrelevant to me. Are you any good with that flail?"

Valen felt his tail curl up as his eyebrow raised. "Are you any good with that sword?"

Solaufein glanced down at the sheathed longsword tied to his side. "What do you think of this?" He asked it - a gesture that would've seemed mad on anyone else, but Valen remembered (with annoyance) that the sword could talk.

"He sure seems useful in a fight," Enserric spoke up, though the voice was somewhat muffled thanks to the blade-cover. "Very strapping, broad under all that mithral armor, and quite intimidating when he wants to be." Valen curbed an involuntary growl in his throat when he realized that sword was referring to him. "They must keep him around for more than looks. I wouldn't want to fight him."

"Why does your sword talk?" Valen wondered, tiredly, rubbing at his brow.

Solaufein's expression became distant. "I asked myself that when I first met Lilarcor, the sword of a old friend of mine," Solaufein explained, "and I have come to understand now that - and this is true for most unexplained phenomena in our universe - it is probably _always_ the fault of some wizard."

"Oh, very, very true," Enserric glumly agreed. "In my case, I was the wizard, and one mis-placed ghoul touch later, voila! The shiny pinnacle of justice you see before you was born. Though perhaps I was merely always a sword, dreaming it was a mortal man . . . Being this way for a few decades has really given me a lot of time to philosophize about my condition."

Valen didn't really have a response for that. He just wished that it didn't talk at all. Or at least, talked less. "Would you just keep him quiet?" Valen asked nicely.

"I resent that!" Enserric bit out, still muffled but his voice rose almost an octave in objection. "I'm the quietest one in this entire group! Why, I don't even breathe or make footsteps! Don't even get me started on these two!"

The General impatient made for the exit and opened up the doors to the wide cavern that housed Lith My'athar. Behind him, he heard Binne chime in, "well, he's certainly not the loudest - that's definitely Deekin. Or me, if I'm nappin'." The chatter immediately ended when the foursome entered the city proper. The temple, situated on a higher part near the end of one cavern, was built like a squatting spider on a web of walkways and bridges that extended over the entire cavern like an elegant, scrawling web. Each house and building fitted neatly into the cavern's walls as the rock was seamlessly carved into their faces. Mineral pools of stretching stalactites formed the natural features of the city, which was lit not by light but the phosphorescence of mushrooms larger than most trees, strategically grown to provide a non-blinding natural light throughout the city.

Solaufein's reaction was the most genuine he'd ever seen out of a drow yet. The man trudged down the temple steps and took in the sights in both spectrums in a expression of naked, dumbstruck awe. "Usstan'bal ssuthus . . . wund ilta Cress . . ."

The kobold let out a whistle while the cambion seemed to be stuck in the doorway after hitting her horns on it once. The got out on the second try and emerged scowling, rubbing her forehead. Valen could empathize a little, as he'd hit his forehead on more than one, though he had the wherewithal to duck (and also didn't have the same horn problem). "Damn short elf-doors! Can't believe I'd miss—" She cursed. Then, she took in the sight of the open cavern and her mouth hung open. "Huh."

"Underdark be a lot bigger than Deekin first thought," Deekin observed in an uneasy tone. "Deekin thinking it be like his old home in kobold caves but it be waaaaaaaaaaay bigger than he ever imagined. How you think they manage to fit whole city into cave?"

"Looks like they've carved themselves into it," the cambion mused. "In a way that holds it all together. Like how other elves build themselves into the landscape, or roads are built into natural valleys."

The words seemed to involuntarily pour from Solaufein's lips - the comment seemed non sequitur. "I've escaped, into her arms?" Valen translated, feeling a little like he suspected other people did when he told them to go hump a razorvine when they annoyed him.

It took the drow a moment to respond, lost in a mental translation. "I spent a few time learn - no. What is the word for forced learn?"

"Oh, I know that one, it's that thing they do in Helm's churches!" Binne piped up, just as Valen offered, "Indoctrination?" Only Binne went on as they both turned to stare at her in confusion, and then growing horror: "They pick the boys when they're young and sexually abuse them to make them grow up submissive, and then fill their heads with nonsense about the Cult of the Watcher and so forth, and then they line them up in armor and set them against anyone Helm disagrees with to either die or survive and perpetuate the cycle of abuse on a new generation of Watchers!"

There was a moment of silence as everyone processed this. Though unfamiliar with human religion, Valen had heard of the Watcher Helm, but not that particular aspect of that cult. He also wasn't sure if he trusted the cambion with anything, least of all information, but it completely distracted him from a moment from everything else. "Do they . . . Really do that?" He wondered out loud, a little horrified but also morbidly curious.

"Deekin not hear that about Helm god," the kobold examined, "but it make a lot of sense for him to be creepy being named Watcher, who spends all time watching people but not doing anything about what they do."

"The gods _are _creeps, Deekin," Binne insisted firmly, "though I guess Eilistraee is one of the okay ones," she amended, looking at Solaufein somewhat apologetically. "But the rest of 'em are cunts."

"That is not dissimilar from what happens in Lloth's church," Solaufein spoke up with a strange enthusiasm in his voice. "It is almost relieving to hear that humans are not any better than us."

"Well, they both murder each other about the same rate," Binne confirmed, "though for different reasons. And they like pretending they're better than that. Here, murder is pretty impersonal, which I find refreshing."

Now completely sidetracked, his attention turned find her amber eyes regarding him at the same time. "You find murder refreshing?" Valen stated more than asked, disbelievingly.

She gave him a consternated look. "I find it down _here _refreshing compared to surface murder. Up there it's senseless! Plagues, bandits, madmen, even the weather tries to kill you - and then there's good ol' murder on top of that. There's no real reason, it's just chaos. It's in our nature. And people will invent all sorts of reasons - because your husband cheated on you with a barmaid or your brother stole your inheritance, or they gave you a nasty look in the marketplace. Nasty business. At least if I'm eaten by something horrific in the Underdark or murdered by drow, I'll know it's precisely because I was stupid enough to earn it."

The sense of living amidst chaos, or spiraling headlong into it, was something ingrained somewhere deep in Valen's bones that would never be removed, no matter how the passing of time removed him from the past. Though he had spent but a few years in the Seer's company, he had not left the grove until they had traveled in the Underdark - he had been afraid to explore at first, afraid to leave, afraid to be. It had never really felt like home to him, even if it had given him some peace. Ever since they'd descended, he'd felt a little closer to the man he'd tried to bury. "The surface and the Hells have more in common than I thought," the General mused.

"Why am I not surprised to hear you were in the Hells?" Binne muttered, and endured his answering stony silence.

Solaufein turned his head back to regard the tiefling. "To answer your question, General, part of the Spider Bitch's doctrine forbids the leaving of her faith. To do so would invoke your own death, for she would send yochlol after you to drag you back in pieces. No matter where you run, her Web waiting is at the end of your journey."

That surprised Valen, since he hadn't known gods to ever take such personal interest in their worshipers. "Seems petty of her," the cambion observed and he found himself uncomfortably agreeing with her.

"And foolish," the tiefling added. "Wouldn't that ultimately result in a dearth of followers? And don't the gods need those who believe in them to exist?"

"I never said Lloth was an intelligent," Solaufein told them. "Just that she is, as Binne would say, one of the cunts."

Once the sacrilegious discussion was over, the posse moved across the colonnaded walkways toward the city center as Valen pointed out landmarks along the way. A number of Houses, Mae'vir being the largest, lined the spidery paths. Toward the lower end of the large cavern, the walkways converged into an open market that seemed to make up the center of the web, where dark creatures fluttered about in states of lively disarray. Everything was for sale and on display that one could imagine - even the sale of flesh; though Valen thought it prudent to mention along the way that they were not to touch anyone with a collar on their person since that was considered an insult to the House of their ownership. Both the cambion and kobold were stunned into a rare and blissful silence at the revelation that slavery was common amongst the drow.

"When I came to the surface, it was explained to me that that it is not uncommon on the surface, either," Solaufein confirmed solemnly as they watched two drow females dressed to the nines walk down a line of collared people of all different shapes, sizes, and races being quite literally auctioned off by a duergar slave master on a podium. "I have seen so in the human cities. Indentured servitude, cattle, or prostitution, or merely 'imprisonment' for criminals," he continued on. "There are many words for rothe."

"Who are all these people?" The cambion wondered miserably. "Where could they have all come from?"

The General felt a little thrown by her reaction. "I was a battle-slave for countless decades in the Blood Wars. Slavery is commonplace on the planes as well, sickening as it is. I know the Seer has bought many and tried her best to rehabilitate them, but her coffers are not endless, unlike the supply of slaves."

Deekin nodded along. "Most kobolds be slaves too, usually to dragons but sometimes other nasty things."

"Not you," Binne protested, looking between the two of them with some mixture of alarm and horror.

"Deekin be exceptional exception, not rule," he chuffed. "Horn-lady not know that? You be more sheltered than Deekin originally think."

With a helpless expression, she turned to Solaufein who gave her a long and considering look. "Don't ask me to be silent," she demanded when he opened his mouth. "There's wrong, and then there's worse. And this is somewhere below that."

"I was going to say that evil is relative," the drow finished with an impassive eyebrow raise. "I have killed for every reason that there is. Show me a pinnacle of measurable evil, and I will surpass it for you." Valen's respect for the drow rose incrementally.

Her eyes softened and became downcast. She looked between the other two. "You're all simply full of surprises. Well . . . I suppose we can't do anything for them now. Can't kill everyone, and no money and all, can't even buy 'em . . . Fucking . . ." Her eyes were downcast and she began to mutter to herself angrily under her breath.

It did not take the cambion long to find a distraction in the form of Gulhrys, House Wizard of Mae'vir and proprietor of magical goods and ingredients in the market. The prices for ingredients by her standards seemed high; forgetting that they were in the Underdark, where commonplace resources she was used to finding would be hard to come by. Binne began to argue vehemently about prices with him, and it got bad enough to the point where Solaufein stepped in to distract her and lead her elsewhere while Deekin took over negotiations and began pulling item after item from a bag of holding on his back before the gleaming drow wizard's eyes.

Valen watched amusedly as the kobold pulled out several stacks of looted armor and weapons from a bag of holding to trade for potions, wands, upgrades and ingredients. He was a proficient haggler, and not as much of a weakling as he seemed to be when he managed to talk Gulhrys down from a price or two. When Solaufein returned without the cambion to speak with the wizard and Valen turned in the direction his gut naturally pulled, and there she was.

It was a remnant of his past life, this sense of direction - as well as his charged initial reaction to the scent of her blood. They were shadows of the beast, leaping at the scent of an enemy. It took conscious effort for him to quash down the sudden and violent urge to _kill_; if the cambion contributed nothing else, she was an excellent exercise in self-control for him. And it seemed the drow had deposited her in the public ale gardens to cool off . . . Right in between a group of Eilistraeens and Mae'vir soldiers, the latter of whom had just noticed their other.

His logic told him that Solaufein was his priority; he was the one in the Seer's vision that she wanted protected. Instincts told him that devils needed not be left to their own devices. There were just some things you didn't do - walk into portals blindly, piss off crazy wizards namely - and leaving devils unattended was one of them. For the first time in his life, Valen's logic overrode his instincts and he remained near the drow, keeping the gardens in his periphery while Solaufein and Deekin finished up their transactions.

As he donned a pair of bracers he'd traded with Gulhrys for, Solaufein finally glanced over at Valen. "I am sure Binne has calmed down since, would you mind telling her we are soon leaving?"

The General marched off only somewhat grudgingly and went to fetch the half-devil, making sure he kept Solaufein in his periphery with his angle of approach. He wasn't far, but he could tell that matters in the open-air ale gardens were getting tense from the postures of the two groups. The Eilistraeens were no longer seated, and standing tall while the others had begun to gesture angrily. Binne stood in-between, her thrashing tail the only giveaway to her agitated temper.

She had shouted something at the Mae'vir men - Valen could see their house colors on their clothes now that he was closer - and then the air was charged with the scent of adrenaline. "I said BEGONE!" Binne repeated forcefully, and the word seemed to clap their air for a moment startling passersby who blinked . . . And then kept on walking. The Mae'vir men exchanged no words or gestures and simply ran from the gardens at full speed, right past Valen and out of the market to their compound.

Valen turned met the fiery gaze of another in Binne's eyes - a snarling, familiar creature he'd only seen with the Seer's help. Her eyes that gained a glowing sheen, and he but breathed and it was gone. Barely a moment it was there, and then the golden-eyed beast carefully leashed in an instant, draining out of her countenance at the slightest shift of expression. She smiled, and he frowned, because it didn't seem natural. It fitted on her face, but it was not the sort of smile one would expect in the Underdark, especially from one who wasn't a drow - and even then he'd only seen the Eilistraeens freely smile in such a way. It was on the wrong face. Though he recalled Imloth chiding him on throwing stones; as if he was someone who could judge what was and was not natural.

"Oh, hullo General," she greeted, the smile falling back into neutrality the longer they stood staring at each other in silence.

The General's eyes sought out the Eilistraeens behind her, who had relaxed back into their seats. "That was well handled," he commented.

"Was that a compliment?" she asked. "It didn't really sound like one, but I'll take it."

"An observation," he corrected.

"Only because his version of telling people off is to punch them in the guts until they vomit," Feiran, one of the guards Valen had trained, betrayed him from his seat at the gardens and lifted his ale in toast to the warlock. "Well shouted, a'temra!" he slurred. "And may - _hic_ \- I add you have a very finely shaped - _hic _\- pair 'o horns?"

Her tail curled up in intrigue. "Are all your people so forward?" She wondered aloud, amusedly. "I think I'm beginning to like drow."

Feiran squinted at Valen over a mug of what smelled like something a duergar made in his closet and Valen cleared his throat. "We need to go, it's time to leave," he informed her and walked off before she could get the last word. As they passed Gulhrys, she gave the drow wizard a well-reciprocated glare and silently accepted a pack that Solaufein handed to her.

Without mentioning the incident further, he led the three on foot across the pathways of Lith My'athar to the lower docks to the Dark River. The scent of the air changed in their approach and he had to remind himself to warn them once they were on boat to never touch the poisonous water. He was about to mention it out loud when he heard the cambion talking softly about him behind his back on the way to Cavallas:

"He looks like a tiefling," she muttered to her companions, unknowingly setting the hair on his nape standing. "Probably more human than demon, not like me. One of his parents' must've been half tanar'ri. I think I'm something different, but not sure what." She made a sniff, or a sniffle. "You know, I'm starting to think he might not like me."

There was a moment of silence before Solaufein responded by pointing out the obvious, "He can hear you."

"He's not going to pay attention," she assessed dubiously, "not if he doesn't like me."

Valen stopped and turned around. He pointed behind him and addressed Solaufein, the mostly-sensible one. "Of course I can hear you. _That _is Cavallas. He can take us across the river- but be wary of him. No one is sure exactly what he is or what he's capable of. He's certainly different, but not in a bad way, and he doesn't seem to have any desire to aid our enemy. He's the only one who can safely travel this river - it's waters are poisonous, its currents wild, and it is rumored to be fraught with strange and deadly creatures."

A strange smile crossed Solaufein's face. "It already feels like home."

Cavallas did not stand out much from his surroundings. He was a little taller than Valen and reeked of strangeness and decay - whatever Cavallas was, the beast in Valen was sure that it was better off not knowing. The creepy boatman had always given him chills, with his hollow voice and shadowed face. It didn't help that Valen had spoken to him three times over the course of two weeks now, and he was absolutely certain that the boatman had never changed out of the same robe. It had probably never been washed in however long Cavallas' life was. One of the Seer's followers had left out clothes of spider silk for the boatman once, thinking perhaps he was homeless or dobluth and hid his face to avoid attention, but the next day the clothing was gone and Cavallas was still in that same tattered robe. He'd probably just stood there and stared at it as someone else stole it. If he was doing the creepy boatman act to hide from people, he wasn't doing a good job.

As Valen thought about the boatman and watched Solaufein interact with him, he was peripherally aware of the others around him. The kobold had trailed after Solaufein and scrawled in a smaller version of his large journal, one of the trades he'd made for Gulhrys - an unused spellbook that made a better journal for the bard than anything else nearby. The biggest distraction was Binne inching into the edge of his line of sight and staring at him, openly. He endured her antics with dignity, not knowing how or even if he should respond.

The chances of her being a minion of the devil were high, given their rare circumstances, but as he turned to regard her his suspicions immediately died with her grin. "Hullo!" She greeted with a wave.

He frowned, confused. Was she trying to goad him? They'd already greeted each other earlier. He glanced away from her and back to Cavallas.

"I like your hair," she continued rambling on. "I-it's very red. Mine's, uh, more black than red. I guess." Her hand had inched up to the ends of her braid and began toying with the tail of it in a kind of nervous tick he thought he'd never see on a devil. "It's, yours, it's the kind of like when the sun's just below the horizon over the docks in Neverwinter, and the sea starts to look as red as the sky. Have you ever seen a sunset? Or been to the surface? Well, I guess we're in the Underdark so you can't see one now. How could you? No sun. Silly question. Are—"

He felt like the ruder thing for him to do, between the two options of leaving or staying that he had to choose from, would be to allow her to continue enduring whatever form of verbal self-torture she was engaging in. The only other option was to engage and torture himself as well. So, he walked toward Solaufein purposefully leaving the two to follow, and put it out of his mind where it belonged. He heard the cambion mutter under her breath some more and the kobold's quill scratching interrupted by a sharp intake of gasping breath when they both took in the sight of the Dark River.

Valen had not been on the surface for more than two years and never left the Seer's grove. He'd seen the sun, the little one they worship called the moon, and the other little ones they called stars. It'd been amazing to see a world that revolved around something, that changed without a mood to guide it. He'd taken in trees, clouds, weather, all of it in stride. It was odd for a world to react . . . Reflexively to things, as it was explained to him, rather than emotionally. Sigil had mood swings that affected the weather, and it had the Lady's iron will behind it. As for the Hells, each plane had its own patterns, but nothing he'd ever seen quite had the variety of life and natural wonder that he'd seen in his brief time on the surface. From what he'd been able to gather, it was a great deal larger than most of the planes - at least, the habitable parts were. Prime was vast, varied, and very hard to grasp. He'd glimpsed paintings of the ocean, of rushing rivers, of teeming jungles. The Underdark was its own world in itself, one that he was barely beginning to understand even after spending roughly four months there. The General still had a hard time identifying noises in the oppressive darkness, where only mushrooms and magic were light sources.

The Dark River made him a little wistful for the surface, even after his limited experience. It had natural cave fungus colonies over its vast, cavernous ceiling that lit the water with a distant, aqua glow. Only the crests of the River's waves were visible, crushing up on the black and rocky shore. He couldn't imagine how the surfacers must feel if it was their first time in the Underdark. "_How_ is there a river down here?" The cambion blurted, incredulously. "Who—what put it here? Where does it go?!"

"All rivers go to ocean," Deekin provided helpfully. "Even baby kobolds know that." He let out a yelp when he got whapped by her tail by 'accident.'

Cavallas was surprisingly helpful after speaking to the drow warrior for but a scant few minutes. He'd even taken to calling Solaufein 'Wayfarer,' though whether or not that was an official title, affectionate nickname, or obscure insult was hard to determine. He'd never called anyone else Wayfarer before, and only addressed Solaufein with it, which put a tally on 'devil-minion' side of things. There was a chance this all had some connection to the arch-devil, and Valen wasn't going to start taking any chances with homeless, mysterious, and apparently immortal boatman who guided rickety crafts across poisonous rivers to mysterious islands. Not when the Seer's life counted on it, anyway. He was still getting on the boat, of course - where his own life was concerned, he had no care to spare.

The boatman offered them free passage to one of two places in the large river. One was an island rumored to be a defunct artificer's lab, a popular target for scavengers due to the rare metals used in the golems' composition. The other was something that had appeared only four months ago, a sudden island in the middle of the river that seemed to be inhabited solely by peculiar winged surface elves. Solaufein decided immediately that they were headed there first, to no opposition.

They boarded the boat with little scuffle and dumped their gear in the hold and lingered up top to get a good look at the river up close.

"Is he going to cast off, or . . . ?" The cambion trailed off of her own thought and squinted at the hooded boatman. "But there's no lines . . . How does he fucking steer this can?" As she finished her thought, the boat lurched gently into motion and pushed itself into the river. "Magic, right," she surmised.

"Best not to question it," Solaufein suggested helpfully.

The kobold had finally put away his notes, though what exactly was so important that he was scratching in down in there semi-constantly was beyond Valen's reckoning. "Deekin never hear of winged elf before," he finally spoke, after a long and blissful silence. "Boss, you maybe thing this be an island of angels? Those be good guys and probably would help us, if we ask!"

Solaufein brushed some hair that had fallen near his eyes to the side of his head and frowned. "Angels would not willingly dwell in this place, and neither would avariel," he told the kobold. "They are not common, and dwell in high mountains, or near Celestia. I have met one before, although she had long been separated from her people and lost her wings when she was young. They are very isolated and suspicious of outsiders."

"Valen should fit right in then," the cambion cut in with some amusement. He didn't even bother glaring at her, but it did get a snort out of him.

"They particularly loathe my kin," the drow felt the need to add.

Binne let out a loud laugh. "We'll just send Deekin in to talk to them, then, and hope they don't eat kobold, shall we?"

The kobold in question scratched at his horns. "Deekin not be liking that plan."

The drow shrugged in response, and once again proved himself to be the most rational amongst them. Valen was starting to understand why Nathyrra had said Solaufein reminded her of the Seer. They both had the same sort of insightful look at things, from a larger perspective - although Solaufein and Binne seemed to share the same unfortunate sense of humor. "If they are here, they can surely expect to encounter drow. My appearance will be the least of our problems. I blend in. My concern is with drow other than myself; what use would this make-believe goddess have for the people on this island? Why have they appeared to make their home here? What would draw aerial creatures to such a low place?"

They all thought about this for a moment. Binne tapped her lip and offered, "maybe . . . They're being cultivated as a delicacy?"

Solaufein's nose wrinkled. "Siltrin? Nau, you do not want to eat that. It will give you shakes, make you sick. Some might consider it a delicacy but I found it too tough. Maybe dothkarn would."

Her eyes widened, and then narrowed. "Are you joking? I can't tell with you sometimes."

"I was," he confirmed solemnly. She snorted back more laughter before it could let out.

"Oh. So drow not eat kobold after all?" Deekin asked, hopefully.

"No, that is true. Stay away from the kitchen to be safe, as I have never met other Eilistraeens and know them not. Ask someone, or us, to bring you what you need from there," he carefully instructed.

Deekin seemed stuck on this. Valen was just hoping Enserric didn't start chiming in to contribute. "But . . . Drow eat other elves?" The reptilian bard wondered with a mixture of fascination and horror. "I mean, sure winter is hard and kobold not really discriminate what to eats, but we alls know kobold is not good eatings. To little meat on bones. Elves not much better, honestly."

Binne had started examining her own arms and body as if imagining what eating people, or being eaten, might be like. "I suppose I am meatier than the two of you combined," she admitted blithely. Her stomach growled. "Great, now I'm hungry."

"_Some_ do," Solaufein clarified, "I do not. It is a revolting practice . . . Though now I am hungry as well, and curious about the taste of avariel."

"I was just thinking that!" the cambion chimed. "Have you ever notice how that seems to happen often?"

"We do both seem to think in disturbingly similar patterns," he observed.

Deekin looked even more doubtful than Valen felt. "You guys want to be killing winged elves and eatings them? Boss be more like Old Boss than Deekin thought."

"Can't be worse than eating grigs," was Binne's only defense, though this wasn't much of a defense.

"You've eaten grigs?" Valen wondered aloud, horrified at the thought. She nodded tightly. "_Why__?_"

"They're the only thing besides ogres and goblins to eat in Undermountain," she defended. "And I was hungry!"

"Being curious isn't the same thing has having a desire," Solaufein explained for Deekin's benefit. "I would not eat someone unless I was trapped in a cave for a while with them and they annoyed me severely on several occasions, _and _if the only other source of sustenance was bat shit."

Valen was about to comment on the eating of grigs again, but hearing this from the drow stopped him short. Solaufein did not seem conscious of the attention he'd gained with this statement. "Excuse me?" The cambion blurted out, staring at the drow. Solaufein shrugged and distanced himself by retreating to the hold and withdrawing a whetstone and sharpening one of his daggers. She stared at him as he silently went about this task with growing alarm.

The General was halfway sure it was another ill-made joke. "Drow are very strange," he commented.

"I know the feeling," she empathized.

He didn't engage her further less out of a desire to throttle her and more out of lack of knowledge of what to say. His urge to kill and destroy had been pacified what felt like hours ago, or at least since the market incident. It was easier to tolerate her when she was merely annoying, not threatening.

"I like your flail!" She was saying. "It's very, um. Shiny." Valen valiantly ignored her oblivious rambling. Much like earlier, it seemed to be a nervous tick for her. Unfortunately, they were stuck on a boat with nothing to do other than sit, talk, or sleep. "So's your armor. It looks like mithral. Er." She still seemed to be struggling for what to say.

He glanced at her for a moment, but didn't meet her eyes. The air grew blissfully silent for a few seconds, before she shattered it again, sharing a more coherently thought-out theory of hers off the cuff: "I've a few theories about how you got involved with these here drow and I promise, only two of them are hilarious. Would you like me to share them and then maybe you can tell me which one is the closest to the truth? That way you wouldn't really be telling me anything about yourself, and I'd still have fun rather than standing her trying to talk to the tense air and feeling slightly bored and nauseous on a poison river boat-ride to a cursed flying elf-island because the magical clone of a barmy wizard slapped a geas on me arse."

Valen gave her the flattest stare in his arsenal and let her endure his silence for just a moment before asking, begrudgingly, "What are they?"

She literally leapt up into the air and yelped loudly about a inch, drawing the gaze of the others for a moment before they went back to their individual tasks (knife-sharpening, potion-sorting, and psychically but silently directing the boat in Cavallas' case). "Bane's balls, you startled me!" She hissed. "You said nothing for so long." He continued issuing his flat stare until she finished her thought. "Oh, right. My first one is that you're one of the arch-devil's minions, but don't worry, it has a happy ending! Because, you see you questioned your purpose when you were sent to spy on the Seer, because you got lost along the way."

"Lost," he repeated dryly.

Now that the General had issued the permission that she had apparently needed, Binne went on completely unperturbed. "And then you just sort of had to survive in the Underdark on your own eating safe-smelling, glowing cave fungus that you found growing on the walls, but those all turned out to have psychedelic properties. You tripped out of your mind and into another dimension and were found by the Eilistraeens giggling in a mushroom forest, climbin' up the stalks. An-and then they helped you and took you in and now you defend them because you owe them your life! In my second theory, you're not a minion, well not one of the arch-devil's but you're an escaped slave from the Valsharess' compound - her _personal _slave, you see. But you were trained in combat at a young age by them, and starred in all these gladiatorial arena matches to prove your worth. You were raised by the enemy to be her bodyguard, only for one day she did something suitably evil that I'm sure you could think up rather than me get specific about, you probably have a _great _imagination, and anyway it made you second guess what you were doing for the first time. So you led a revolt of her men and a few other slaves and although many of you died, quite a few of you got out - and you ran to a place where you knew you'd find mercy, from the Eilistraeens, since they're pretty much all right folk from what I can tell."

Valen was genuinely surprised she had spent as much time on these thoughts as she apparently had, in the short time since yesterday. She had a healthy imagination, at least. "And the third?" He asked, after he processed what she had said.

She blinked, and shifted from foot to foot as the riverboat swayed. "Oh yes, right. The third is that something terrible happened to you," she said plainly.

". . . That's it?"

Binne shrugged. "Pretty much. Something terrible happened to you and you ran away from it. Or, perhaps it's still chasing you, like a shadow you can't really escape. Some things never leave us no matter how hard we try to leave them, but they aren't all bad because they remind us of who we are and how far we've come, and I suppose I thought that maybe the Seer makes sense to you in a very strange world in the sort of way Solaufein makes sense to me. They're so bright that standing near them makes the shadows seem slightly less dark. So you stick around, even though we're here in a world entirely of shadow in the Underdark, so maybe that shadow metaphor isn't the best one, but it's the best I've got at the present." Having finished her theories, she seemed to be satisfied with herself and took a seat on the deck next to his legs. "So, how close was I? Any of 'em on the mark?" She wondered, looking up at him.

The General thought about the best way to answer him. Surprisingly, he wasn't as irked by her as before, and was finding it easy to talk to her when she made most of the conversational effort. "Your third is the most accurate," he admitted, "though they all held elements of truth."

She hummed in an appreciative tone. "Indulge me, General," she suggested. "We're on a long and boring float and this is the most conversation I've gotten out of you yet."

"Many terrible things have happened to me. I have survived in spite of them all. I was trained to kill, or perhaps born into it. I was enslaved. I was lost, and I was found." It was the easiest way to summarize his life, not that he'd ever been in the position before of having to do so. It was strange thinking of such experiences and distilling them into points; his past had never felt distant, only removed by a scant few years. He didn't even know how old he was.

Binne was silent for a while. When he looked down, he saw her gaze fixated on something distant and unseen and her hands fiddling nervously with a necklace that was clasped at her throat of a large and simply carved black stone. "I was hoping it would be the first one," she offered in a wistful tone. "All those mushrooms would've been fun to eat, at least."

"It might have been a kinder fate," Valen conceded. "I have heard that arch-fiends reward their minions that are useful to them." Thinking about the devil again, even if it was inadvertent this time, made him recall his earlier suspicions. Though after speaking to her, he was half-convinced she wasn't really anybody's minion other than maybe Solaufein's. She had a good imagination, but didn't strike him as cunning enough.

The reflexive glare from the thought seemed to trigger something in Binne that straightened her spine. "I'm no one's minion," she spoke quietly, her voice hiding a faint tremble.

Valen frowned. "I didn't say you were."

"But you implied it," she spat.

"I implied no such thing," he growled right back. "You have twisted your own meaning."

She rose from her seated position to glare at him properly. "Well whatever the bloody meaning is, you can take your suspicions and—I don't know, go feed 'em to the River! And then toss yourself in after if you like! Or just keep them all to yourself and go somewhere else on the damn boat, that'd be better. I don't really need them, and I've got plenty enough of them as it is!" She grumbled under her breath more or less continuously as she stalked away toward the hold and stomped down the stairs into the darkness. What exactly she was expecting to do down there was a little beyond him as it held nothing other than their gear, but that was her business.

The General was feeling confused and irritated about the entire conversation when Solaufein approached him a few moments later, replacing his companion's place at the railing as he stared down at the rushing Dark River. "General," the drow greeted, sounding relaxed in all the ways Valen wasn't capable of being. Valen nodded without replying, turning his gaze to the river. "You are in a fine mood," Solaufein commented. "I hope it will not interfere should we encounter combat."

"No, it will not," the tiefling assured. "The cambion—"

Solaufein's interruption was rather graceful, "Her name is Binne."

"_She_," Valen emphasized bitingly, "is very . . . Irritating."

"She senses your suspicion," Solaufein assessed easily. His leather and chainmail creaked as the boat rose up dramatically over a larger swell, and then gently floated back down almost soundlessly. "And subtlety is not your strength," he criticized, and some amusement leaked into his tone.

The hackles on the tiefling rose at this. "I have the right to be suspicious," he defended. Why everyone was so insisting on giving him grief over perfectly justifiable mistrust was beyond him, and it grated at him that everyone seemed to be trying.

Solaufein surprised him, though. "You would be a fool not to be," he calmly went on. "Where you stand, I now represent a threat to your power."

Like the Seer, he had a way of verbally cutting to the heart of a matter. Valen frowned at the drow's frank observation of his own circumstances. "I'm not worried about my power. I don't have power," the tiefling corrected.

The drow turned away from the water to regard Valen with dark-wine eyes. "You should be. And you do. The Seer trusts in you. This is valuable. You are the General of her forces. Nathyrra has spoken to me of how you have earned their respect. My people are suspicious by nature, and our respect is not given lightly. You have earned theirs. And I have arrived, earning nothing, but have been given everything that you bled for."

This was making him uncomfortable. "I admit that I am . . . " Valen began, unsure. "Perhaps a little resentful of the idea of you issuing commands over my head. I will honor the Seer's decisions, whatever they may be. I have no problem accepting commands from you."

Solaufein's hand fell to Enserric's hilt in a hauntingly familiar gesture. Now that he wasn't puking on the temple floor, it was clear to see that Solaufein never completely let his guard down except around those he trusted most - inexplicably, this was the kobold and the cambion. Valen's hand had never strayed from Devil's Bane for more than a few inches since he'd inherited the flail from Grimash't. "I was the weapon master of Despana, First House of Ust'Natha," the drow confessed, unknowingly ending Imloth and Nathyrra's bet. "All that I have ever commanded has been burnt to ash, and glad I am for it. This is not a burden I take lightly; neither is it my desire to command forces into any sort of battle in the future. I work better in . . . Smaller groups. I am hoping to persuade the Seer to change her mind."

Valen snorted at that. "Good luck. She's more stubborn than I am."

Solaufein straightened as if to walk off, but then returned his gaze to the General with a weirdly attentive expression. "Have you ever been to the surface?" He queried.

"Not entirely. I'm from Sigil. A place called the Hive. I've been all over the Abyss and the Hells in the Blood Wars, and most recently the Underdark, but I haven't explored the top of prime. I've seen images, read stories of strange places. What little I have seen in the Seer's grove is beautiful, but I didn't venture out." Buried somewhere inside of Valen was a suffocating explorer.

"It is worth venturing. May I offer you my advice, General?" Solaufein's question was respectfully given, and the General had no doubt that if he said no, the drow would politely withdraw.

"Speak your mind, please," Valen said, as his respect rose more for the man.

"My kin are reviled on the surface," he began to relate. "In some places we are killed on sight, if we walk undisguised. It is not so different for those of demonic heritage as Binne and yourself are, yet there are a few bastions where all may be welcome and prosper. Waterdeep one of the largest amongst them. Binne was not raised in a world predisposed to be kind to fiendlings, by two loving humans that I have come to understand possessed unnatural patience, for they tried to raise her well, save perhaps instilling in her an unhealthy yearning for trouble. She likely irks you so because she is very curious about you. I have only met one other tiefling in my life who also was from Sigil, but he was your polar opposite in manner. I know from him that Sigil City is sprawling, raucous, and home to every kind of life form that there is. Someone like you would not stick out in a crowd, there. It is not so here. Your kind are not unheard of on the surface, but are very rare. Half-demons are rarer still, known usually to be in positions of demonic hierarchy and are generally hated as manipulative and evil by reputation. My understanding is that Binne's true parentage is a mystery, and the only other individual of any demonic characteristics she has interacted with in her entire life - save you - is her deceased twin brother. She has never lived in any other worlds, unlike us."

Valen's response was as dry as the desert, not that he'd ever seen one in person. "And that is your advice?"

Solaufein's response and subsequent eye roll were equally dry. Maybe even dry-er. "No, my advice is to try calling her by her actual name next time, to glare _less_ not more, and to be grateful for the fact that she is only manipulative, and not evil." The drow left the General to mull it over, stepping over to Deekin to check on the kobold's progress on the potion distribution. He had to give that Solaufein was nothing if not fair; everybody else had either been dismissing or outright criticizing his concerns over the newcomers. Here, the drow had validated him and then pointed out the ways he might improve, the way the Seer might, with a patient hand. Valen was damned if that didn't irritate him almost as much as the others' semi-nonsensical ramblings.

The island where the surface elves had been spotted was a few hours journey by Cavallas' boat. Valen had heard that duergar were able to sometimes navigate the dark river, but he didn't yet know how they went about it. Cavallas stood still on the prow, stiller than stone but for the fluttering of his old robe about his feet. Somehow, telepathically or telekinetically, the boat was being guided with the proper current. Just sniffing the boatman was enough reason for Valen to never question the how or why of it.

The rest of the trip passed mostly in silence. At some point, the General managed to get shut-eye above deck, lulled to sleep by the lapping of water and awoken an hour later by the crash of it startling him. When he came to, he realized everyone had already geared up as Cavallas had alerted them to the presence of land.

Somehow (and he really didn't want to know how), the boat was pulled into a gentle shore. "They have shores down here?" The cambion blurted out at the sight of black, rocky sand giving way to the water. "Huh! And real islands! You have it all!" It sounded like an odd compliment that she directed to the Underdark in general, than anyone specific.

The drow wasted no time as the boat carefully pulled into the rocky shoreline and ground to a halt by Cavallas' will. "We have arrived," the boatman intoned just as Solaufein leapt off of it and onto the shore.

Valen followed shortly after. Feeling vaguely nauseous after spending so much time inhaling fumes from a poison river caused him to momentarily stumble upon landing, and then nearly fall over when the kobold practically leapt onto his back and was startled to meet his feet with mithral. He managed to pull the kobold in and not fall over, but it was rather embarrassing altogether. From his periphery he saw the drow grab Binne's hand as she leapt off, and gave a hearty wave to the boatman behind her.

"Bye, Reaper's Cousin! Don't leave us stranded!" Deekin called after, also waving. Even more baffling was the mimicked wave that Cavallas gave back to them from the boat.

"He won't," Valen assured everyone when Cavallas said nothing. "You'll have to trust me on that."

"I will wait for the Wayfarer, until death parts us," Cavallas assured in his hollow, un-assuring voice.

"Positively bone-chilling," Binne commented as she straightened her belt. "You really do attract the strangest people, Solaufein."

"Good enough," Solaufein decided. His eyes glowed as he peered into the solid darkness ahead of them. "That is more a criticism of you, if you are the one attracted to me. Now quiet, I see a cavern." He wasted no time and marched off into the dark as they closely followed.

Having not seen them in action, he had his doubts. Being overwhelmed by Halaster and the forces of the Valsharess hadn't exactly assured him of the group's prowess, and until he saw them sufficiently tested he vowed he would retain to those doubts. Socially, the group had a dynamic that reminded him much of the Eilistraeens, who would often jest and tease each other with familiarity. He'd been angry the first time they'd subjected him to the same treatment until he understood it did not come from a place of malice, and was a filial initiation (so it had been described to him by Nathyrra, who continued to have the most difficulty between them of adjusting). Solaufein and his allies seemed to talk much, and accomplish little from what he had seen. He told himself to trust Nathyrra's judgment, but without her presence as a reminder, it was all too easy to ignore that voice of reason. Especially with the smell of devil's blood so close by; it bothered him only in moments, not constantly, but it was an insistent and nagging reminder of something he'd rather not have.

The shore had been narrow, with rocky outcroppings and cliffs that led to a cave. Though Valen could see reasonably well in the dark, he was glad to have the drow leading the group; any kind of eyesight was no match for the ability to detect traces of heat. The cavern narrowed into a crevice that Binne offered to send her imp through first; one invisibility and darkvision spell from the kobold later (who performed spells by singing them, though he thankfully refrained from using the cymbals strapped to his pack this time) and Hembercane, the most sullen and dour familiar Valen had ever encountered scurried his way into the dark.

He emerged a few minutes later out of invisibility, looking fully disgruntled as he always did. "There is a city of backwards, dirty, winged elven peasants up ahead," the imp reported to his master with a withering, although ineffectual glare. "They reek of death and disease. I found an ambush of nine led by another red-clad priestess."

"There do seem to be a lot of those lurking about," Binne mused. "Better question is, can my arse fit through that crevice?"

Solaufein assessed her, up and down, and Valen found his eyes following the same curves against their volition. Her tail twitched. ". . . There is always the relic."

Valen's eyebrows knitted in confusion as Binne's went up. "Aye, then the imp could carry us - or Deekin!"

The General didn't really fully understand what was going on until it had already happened, and he was processing the aftermath. A few seconds went by, and then Solaufein's arm had snaked out to grab his as he grasped something in his palm, and abruptly the world went white and gray.

He stumbled, feeling the need to regain his balance despite never leaving solid ground. His tail lashed angrily out at his sudden disorientation; the drow and the cambion had taken a step back. All around him was what looked like an endless white and gray fog, and a light source that seemed to emanate throughout. This was not the Prime, and a part of him knew it instinctively. There was a scent in the air that caught him by surprise, since he'd only experienced it once - it was a change in the air content native to Limbo. "What is this?" He demanded. While he didn't believe this was an attack, he wanted to believe it.

"This place belongs to him," and Solaufein pointed to something that was unidentifiably the angelic version of Cavallas, in the same kind of ratty robe. Valen approached the figure which stood some distance away, surrounded on all sides by doors that stood upright of various make and wooden frames. It would be an otherworldly sight to anyone that wasn't a planar. "It seemed easier to show you than to explain."

Valen snorted. "Is this Cavallas' cousin?"

Binne's eyes sparkled. "We don't know! He won't say! Resemblance is uncanny though."

The General's shoulders eased, although more questions than ever popped up in his mind. "You own a way to travel to your own private dimension on Limbo," he realized. He took in the doors all around them, all closed but each one radiating different smells and auras. "This is a nexus . . . To other realms!" This was the exact kind of thing he'd sought out all those years ago when he ran from Grimash't to the Seer. Escaping Hell would have been easy for him in such a case; instead, he'd had to go the old fashioned way by portal-hunting.

"You are quick," Solaufein complimented, "but it would be better to say I have found a way, than own."

"This realm belongs to the bearer of the relic," the Reaper intoned from behind him in Cavallas' voice. It spooked him a little, and he nearly drew his flail on reflex. "I serve its master."

"And whom is your master?" Valen pressed, looking for a more specific name or answer. It was like Cavallas, with strange gray speckled wings that sprouted out of its back, and Valen was willing to bet it had a colorful and untold history. No planar being got caught itself up in some kind of planar nexus without something terrible happening along the way.

The Reaper didn't hesitate, though. "The bearer of the relic," he intoned.

"It's a hunk of rock with some gems in it, looks gnomish or something to me," Binne offered. "It didn't smell like a curse, if that's what you're thinkin'."

He could feel a growl developing in his chest, somewhere, due to his irritation. "Word of advice," he gritted out, "straight from the Hive: don't play with portals. How do we get out of here?"

Solaufein inclined his head toward the Reaper, whose cowl dipped in a nod. With a wave of a skeletal hand, the creature dismissed them from the plane. In a flash of light, they were on the other side of the crevice with a grumbling Hembercane and Deekin. Solaufein plucked the relic from Deekin's outstretched hand - it was surprisingly small, a black piece with a few gems embedded inside that appeared to be adjustable by twisting and turning them. It fit comfortably and flatly enough in the palm of one's hand. Solaufein, with very little care, dumped the artifact into his boot. "Where is this ambush?" He directed his question at the imp.

"In your boot?" Valen couldn't help but criticize. It seemed an odd place for such a valuable artifact.

Solaufein blinked. "Where else?"

"A pocket? The bag of holding? A pocket? It's a reckless place to keep such a valuable artifact. Think of what the Valsharess could use it for?"

"Probably conquer the world a lot faster," the drow reasoned, reasonably, "but I have tossed it away at sea and it showed up in my pack a minute later. It is attached to me through some unknown magic. You should worry less."

The General's expression did not imply he would be taking Solaufein's suggestion. Thankfully he didn't have a lot of time to muddle in his suspicion for much longer as the ambush of the enemy ambushers was about to take place. After questioning the imp on the enemy's positioning, Binne cast a spell on Solaufein with a abyssal rasp and Solaufein quaffed an invisibility potion just as Deekin turned his face toward the ceiling and barked out a spell - singing it, at the top of his lungs. Luckily that was the whole point - drawing the attention of the foot soldiers who would investigate the noise, or the bleeding of Valen's ears would have all been for nothing.

Four had been sent to investigate the heinous noise, and Valen charged around the corner flail-out with a roar to take them on. The first head rolled in the first three seconds of the battle, and the other three didn't even have time to process what had happened because they were too busy fighting the enraged tiefling with their lives. The beast was out of his cage, and in his element.

Binne, who had charged the same group from not far behind, let out a grimace and kept on running, seeming to think better of the situation. She turned her attention to some of the archers that had started firing upon Valen and pierced one to a wall with an entropic lance. This drew the attention of several others, though they were in turn distracted by Solaufein appearing out of invisibility just as he kicked one of the archers off of his sword, having walked across the walls in the short time to get there. The drow threw a dagger at one of the others in the shoulders and kept moving onto the next as Binne took out the other.

Valen had made short work of the four overall, and was already charging the priestess - the most obvious figure cut in red. It was the center of Solaufein's attention as well, since she was currently hurling spells at him that he was having a hard time dodging or throwing enemy bodies into, and there were still three other archers. A spider seemingly out of nowhere - a giant, ugly sword spider of all things - seemed to be helping them when it occupied a few of the other archers who found their crossbow bolts tipped with acid and poison somewhat useless against it.

As he ran at the priestess who turned to him with wide, almost violet eyes, she was barely able to hold up her shield in time from his flail. Devil's Bane split in two, and thanks to a rather deft wrist flicking it looped itself around her arm inside the shield as he yanked it forward, drawing a pained scream as her arm was pulled out of her socket. She rapidly spat out a healing spell to help with her pain, but the words stumbled her lips as Valen roared and in surge of strength ripped her arm off and flung it away. She stared at her stump in alarm for all of a second before her head turned around completely in its socket, and her body fell to the ground.

He flicked some of the blood off of his flail and took a few bracing breaths, noting the sounds of battle had ceased.

"Bloody hells," Binne blurted out. "Helluva way to go!"

"Hah!" Enserric rang out triumphantly, sending red light gleaming out of his depths and spilling onto the cavern floor. "For lack of a better word, an orgy of violence! I say we keep him, wielder."

"Please do not use that word," Solaufein pleaded quietly with it. "You will give Deekin bad ideas."

They searched the bodies for valuables, though there was only a few useful things amongst them - a small collection of potions or kits, no weapons that any of them could use or needed but Deekin still managed to fit in his bag of holding somehow . . . And on the priestess' body, in a strange pouch at her belt was nothing but a nondescript shard of mirrored glass.

They were all frowning at it as Valen held it up for examination. "I don't get it," the General frowned. "It doesn't smell like a magic artifact, but it must be. Why else would she keep it?"

Binne tilted her face forward and sniffed at it - he didn't jump instinctively, but his tail betrayed his startle at her closeness. "Smells like bad elf."

Solaufein's left eyebrow rose up, expressively conveying his amusement. "Bad elf?" He repeated.

The cambion snorted and folded her arms. "Elf gone bad! Bad smelling elf, like if they didn't bathe or like a rotting elf corpse! Surely you've smelt a rotting elf corpse or two before."

There was a pause of utter silence after this statement. He expected the drow to get angry, or to just stay quiet and stare at her - or for her to express perhaps some shame over this ignorant remark . . . But instead Solaufein tilted his head back and smiled. "I remember that smell. Did you know, I was once trapped in a rotting elf city," he said this somewhat fondly, like he was immersed in a pleasant memory, "while it was on fire?"

Instead, Valen shared a confused look with the cambion while Deekin plucked the mirror shard right out of his hands and sniffed at it too. "Hmm. Deekin maybe holds onto this, big people not very smart-good at keepings little things safe. Boss big dumb enough to put cursed artifact in boot after all."

Binne's eyes bored into Solaufein. "You're really the _oddest_ person."

"This, from you?" the drow scoffed.

"From me."

Valen understood well now that they functioned admirably as a unit in battle, but the talking threw him off. He'd never fought amongst a group of people as small as this that actually got along well with each other. Amongst the Eilistraeens, there was some camaraderie in arms, but never around him. They always stood to attention around him, or clammed up. Imloth was the only one of them that seemed comfortable enough to make jokes at his expense. Here, they worked about as well as capable soldiers, but none of them stood to attention. The respect was unspoken. It was the first thing about them that he had found refreshing, and it put him a little more at ease.

They made their way into the strange elf-town. The General had to be talked into it when the entrance appeared to be an empty archway in the middle of the cavern that led to nowhere, and it set every hackle on his neck on end. Like an angry cat, he had to be cajoled into it by convincing everyone to walk around it without having to entirely explain why; the three seemed to share the opinion that it was better to indulge him in his suspicions than try to question him about them. He was pretty firmly convinced that they were all still minions of the arch-devil - but he wasn't entirely sure whether or not they knew that they were. As he'd said before, it had Baator written all over it. (He kept telling himself this up until they found the third mirror shard. That's when he started questioning his judgment - when he watched Solaufein curse at the ceiling in rage as he dug through refuse to try to find one hunk of maybe mysterious metal that might help the Seer - or at the least frustrate the Valsharess a lot that she hadn't found it first. It was a lot of effort to go through for a potentially minimal payoff.)

The island they'd arrived at soon proved itself to be a nightmare. There were winged elves, but they were disheveled and confused. They spoke in half-random riddles, their logic was circular, and it was clear within a few seconds of talking to any one of them that they were all the victims of some terrible curse.

"Yes, but why are you here?" Solaufein had pressed, looking more and more annoyed with the diseased and tattered looking avariel in front of him. The tiny, bony elf's wings dragged on the ground, but his expression was jubilant and oblivious.

"Why are . . . We like it down here!" He repeated dumbly.

"Please stop asking him that question," the cambion pleaded with the drow.

Solaufein threw up his hands, cursed in Ilythiiri, and stalked off. The little male avariel with disheveled, greasy green hair and tattered wings blinked. And blinked again, in silence. They all had no choice but to follow Solaufein, who had calmly stalked off in the avariel's silence and approached the first building he saw. He walked up a few steps in tried the door, and made a surprised noise when it was unlocked. Startled, the careless drow wandered in, and Valen hurried, not wanting to have to tell the Seer later that he couldn't stop the drow from stepping into a trap in time and that was why the Savior's head was in a bag, past the point of resurrection.

Thankfully, it wasn't trapped. The first building, where they had found the second mirror shard, was a library. A large one, that was partially on fire because whatever curse afflicted them all (as the librarian's husband was happy to inform them, for whatever reason) afflicted his wife peculiarly, turning her once-beautiful visage into that of a medusa. The medusa woman in fact did have a shard of the mirror, something that mysteriously (most likely a wizard's fault) wound up in her boudoir the morning everyone and everywhere changed. He didn't want her to have it since she looked into it and it seemed to upset her, and Deekin was all too happy to help out.

Deekin, of all people (who Valen was starting to suspect was the brains of this entire operation) had a way to immunize himself from turning to stone, a carryover from a previous misadventure with a medusa that had been a great enemy of Solaufein's - he hadn't read the book, he wasn't sure - but everyone was pretty grateful to stand aside and let him handle it. Both the drow and cambion seemed amused, if anything, by Valen's concern over Deekin's safety.

From the doorway into the library proper, they could see the medusa's form slowly throwing books on a bonfire that had started to smoke the room out. Why was anyone's guess; the curse appeared to make people do incredibly strange things. Rather than try to get it off her person, they watched as the kobold tapped the medusa from behind and engaged her in a polite conversation, and simply asking for the shard at the end of it. They watched this work to some amazement, though it was more appropriate to say that Valen was the only one amazed that at the kobold's usefulness; Solaufein and Binne spoke unconcernedly of other things with one another in low undertone.

"I will bet my sword that this is Halaster's fault somehow," Solaufein was whispering.

"You think everything is Halaster's fault somehow," Binne accused, much louder; she didn't seem to have a volume control for her voice.

"Because it almost always is!" The drow insisted.

And by the time they had the third part, Solaufein was solidly convinced in his theory that everything, everywhere, was the dread wizard of Undermountain's fault. It was clear no one could convince him otherwise. After Deekin retrieved the second shard, Binne stumbled into yet another argument with a belligerent merchant that wanted to sell nothing to anyone. Bespelled as the dirty avariel man was, he was nonetheless incredibly lazy and seemed unconcerned with profit whatsoever. It became clear after a few moments that he did have a piece of the mirror, somewhere, but he wasn't inclined to part with it for anything of actual value.

"Stop," Solaufein suggested to Binne, and began to rifle around his pockets. His eyes lit up when he emerged with a piece of pocket lint that he placed in the merchant's outstretched hand. "Is that worth the mirror shard?"

The ex-merchant's nose curled up. "Not even close!" Solaufein's face fell.

"I have some dirt in my boot," Valen volunteered. "Is that worth less?"

"Only if you take back the lint," the merchant demanded. Solaufein did so with a glare and Valen emptied out the sandy contents of his left boot while Binne's nose curled up. He felt his cheeks flaming against his will as he put the boot back on.

The merchant, as it turned out, didn't have the shard on his person . . . But had a way to locate it with a talisman that he gave the increasingly annoyed Solaufein. The talisman had vibrated in in the drow's hands when they approached it . . . And found it with the town's pile of rubbish.

While Deekin made the excuse of needing to update his notes and pulled out his journal and sat down on the dirty cave floor, Valen and Binne stood by each other and hovered, feeling a little useless as Solaufein - since he was holding the pendant - was the only one who could really find the shard. The drow had begun cursing under his breath and kicked some trash around to see what was under it.

And so, Valen questioned the source of his doubts. Was it rooted in his past? Or were his experiences tempering his present, alerting him to something others didn't see?

"You have a lovely constellation of freckles on your nose," Binne chattered next to him, distracting him completely. "Did you know that? About yourself? I suppose you must not look in a mirror very often, you don't seem to me as a vain man."

The comment came from out of nowhere and stopped him up short. His brow crinkled as he tried to decipher her exact aim.

"I swear on Hem's lopsided skull that I will put a dunch in your composure, General Shadowbreath, if it's the last thing I do," she vowed neatly. After enduring his confused silence for a short while longer, she sighed. "Why do you hate m—"

She had started to ask the self-deprecating question, but he interrupted her with one of his own: "Why are you here?" He couldn't help but wonder.

Her subsequent, deflated silence was unexpected. "You don't think I should be here?" For such a tall woman with such a large personality, the question seemed very meek and small.

The General's lips pursed as he quickly reordered his thoughts, trying to salvage the conversation. It wasn't his strong point at all. "It isn't that," he said carefully and slowly, "and it shouldn't matter what I think. You . . . Must understand that you're a cambion. You're also from Prime, and that confuses me a lot. Most of my encounters with others of your kind have been hostile." All of them were, but she didn't need to know that. He thought of what to tell her without giving her anything she could use against him in the future. "I fought for countless years against your kind in the Blood Wars. Only one of power like yours would have enough intelligence and strength to marshal enemy forces into battle. I'm a person who has spent decades fighting a war against people exactly like you."

Her reaction was as unexpected as her earlier response had been. She inflated right back up and the sparkle came back to her eyes. "Aw!" She seemed to get the wrong meaning from something he said. "You think I'm intelligent and strong."

He frowned. "You know that isn't what I said."

"You know, I bet you have some good horror stories. You'd probably win if we fought though," she admitted. "That's a might scary flail you got, and I'm also not that strong. I like to think I get by on mostly blind luck!"

". . . I feel confused every time you talk," he admitted honestly with a helpless shrug.

She grimaced at this. "I've actually been trying to tone down the accent. Is it that bad?"

Valen shook his head, feeling a few loose strands from his hair fall forward. He brushed them away behind one of his ears, and felt the weight of Binne's eyes on his movements. "No, I understand what you're saying - well most of the time - what I mean is, you're not like anyone I've met," he finally managed to settle on the words to describe how he felt, and it was a triumphant sensation. "You don't act, speak, or seem to think at all like any warlock or demon I've ever known. You're a . . . A combination of contradictions. You're friends with a drow and a kobold and that's not even the oddest thing about you. At first, I thought you really were as haphazard and ridiculous as you pretended to be when you first teleported here, but you more than hold your own in battle."

As Deekin's quill scratched behind them, Binne let out a squeaking, helpless laugh. "Oi, just wait til we actually trip our way into a fight and see what you say then. That's happened, and I mean literally."

He didn't doubt it. "You followed Solaufein willingly into the Underdark, which puzzles me," he went on. It wasn't exactly something a sane person would do, but it almost made sense for a demon. "Why? Deekin, I understand, he's a case of hero worship, but why are you here?"

Binne gave him a quiet and assessing gaze. It was easy to forget the cambion wasn't actually as dumb as she presented herself to be. She just was easily distracted. "It's not really hero worship, for starts," she corrected blithely, "they'd met before. Old friends. Deekin wrote a book about their first adventure together and everything."

He gave the kobold behind them who was still scritching and scratching with his quill in his journal quietly, studiously. "Nathyrra mentioned that. Have you read it?" Valen asked, finding himself a little curious since it had come up in a few conversations of late.

She urged him a little closer like she had a secret to tell, and though it grated at him he took a step closer to her. "Er, don't tell him, but I couldn't get past the first chapter," she said, perfectly within earshot of the kobold and why she had bothered trying to make a secret of it was anyone's guess. "Not his fault at all, he's a fine narrator - his editor took the soul out of the whole thing, it was really just . . . dreck. A more literate bard on the surface has promised to help him edit his new one instead. Apparently he wants to write about all this Undermountaindarkvalsharessyshite. I think it'll be a smash, i-in a good way."

He stared at her. "You . . . have a way of destroying words."

It wasn't a compliment, but she took it as one. "It's a gift!"

"Then you had not met Solaufein before descending Undermountain together?" He pressed.

She shook her head. "Well, no, that's where we met. But I suppose we're friends now!"

"Suppose?"

Her eyes narrowed at him. "Why are you repeating words I say as if they're questions?"

But he had to know. "Are you in his debt? Does he owe you something? What do you stand to gain from all of this? You must have some angle."

This line of questioning didn't seem to impress her at all and she took a step away from him, looking uncomfortable and if he didn't know better a little hurt. "For start? _If _I had a hidden angle, I'd hardly tell you. And why must debts and gains factor into it? Can't we all simply be friends who occasionally kill people together with benefits?"

He considered Imloth, the Seer, and Nathyrra, all urging him to give these strangers a chance. How could he, when trusting went against his very nature? He frowned. "It always comes down to power, with your kind. I'm conditioned to think that either he must have power over you, or you over him."

The cambion pouted but something in her countenance softened. She did not seem offended when she nonetheless criticized, "You're really one to judge, judgyhorns. And if you'll recall, I was also slapped in the tail bone with a geas by two Halasters - _two _of 'em, Oghma knows why but is keepin' his silence on the matter. I'd probably still be on the frontline in Waterdeep otherwise. I suppose there's many fronts in this war, and digging through trash in a city of mad elves is, er, important work that I'd rather . . ." She trailed off and her gaze found its way to Solaufein, who was still grumbling - louder this time - and rifling through garbage. "Not personally do. Why is Solaufein's doing it. 'Cause he volunteered."

They both paused in their discussion to watch the drow in morbid fascination for a moment. It underlined the moment. "It's not a judgment of mine," Valen eventually defended once his brain remembered what it was supposed to be doing, "just an observation drawn over decades that most devils are conniving and only out for themselves in the universe, and their own advancement. They'd step on anyone to get ahead."

"Generalizations won't help you here," she suggested with a smile and then laughed at her own joke. "Heh, get it? General?"

General Shadowbreath was not amused, and also had to make sure that Imloth never interacted with Binne, _ever_. "You confuse me," he repeated. "You all defy many expectations, but he . . ." Solaufein abruptly threw back his head and growled 'FUCK!' at the ceiling in anger, throwing a piece of garbage at the wall as it hit the cave wall with a slimey thud. The two fiendlings watched with straight faces, although Binne did let out a snort. At the sight. "He, I at least feel like I understand," Valen finished.

Binne began to murmur a few indecipherable phrases under his breath that were decidedly not abyssal but decidedly were insulting. "Oh whatever, stuff it. I like Solaufein, not possessively, just honestly I like him and I think he's a good sort," she snapped. "And that he saved my life in Undermountain. I got, er, captured. By rakshasa . . . And sold into slavery to some ogres. I was a midwife to them for—for a long time, and cooked the adventurers that didn't make it as far as I did up for them to eat. They slapped a collar on me that removed my magic and took—wh, oi, are you laughing at me?"

No he wasn't. His smirk was just twitching. That was all. "No. Yes," he admitted, "it's hard and . . . A little entertaining to imagine you as an ogre midwife."

She snapped, and her voice echoed off the cavern walls making him wince: "Well, it happened! And they took all my things, so I was naked as a bird the entire time!" She winced and seemed to rethink her volume after processing what she had just admitted. "So, if you're picturing it now, let me also mention I was starving for months. Or . . . years, I don't know, down there in my skivvies deliverin' nasty babies and cooking up halfling stew. So maybe add that to your imagination too. And _that's_ how Solaufein found me - malnourished in the nude and enslaved to ogres by a magic-repressing torc, and I was completely at his mercy. I promised I'd show him how to get farther into if he freed me, and he kept his word. He fed and clothed me and never once looked at me funny exceptin' when I earned it for being an idiot. He looks after his own, and has never once described me as the 'girl with horns and claws.'" As she drawled, her expression became pensive. "So, yes, I follow Solaufein, because he treats me like I'm his equal and has never looked down on me," she concluded. "Although my height makes that difficult, but you know what I mean! And there's the why of it, so you can take your paranoia and shove it somewhere the sun don't shine. Which, I suppose is everywhere around here since we're in the Underdark . . . But also up your arse!"

The General blinked startled blue eyes, mulling over her heated defense. "Thank explains much . . . Thanks. You've given me a lot to think about." And re-think about, he silently added, and turned to see how Solaufein's search was coming along, but stopped himself short to regard her again. "Also, I don't hate you," he corrected gently. The cambion snorted rather than respond. "Why should I hate you, Binne?"

"Because I annoy you?" Her upset morphed into another smile that spread across her face. "Hey, you're using my name now! I've graduated from cambion to my name. I feel privileged!"

The General hadn't noticed the slip up, but made a mental note to correct it later. "You annoy Solaufein far more than I, and he doesn't hate you whatsoever," Valen pointed out. "You shouldn't . . . Do not mistake my suspicion for hatred. You'd have to do a lot to earn that."

Binne squinted at him. "Well, you're always givin' me the stink-eye so that'd be why I assumed you hated me. A perfectly natural assumption, I think."

The idea of an eye stinking put a lot of mental images in his mind that he didn't really want. "The what?" He asked, not really wanting to know where that particular idiom had come from.

"The stinky, gnarly, hairy eyeball?" Even worse mental pictures popped up. "That cantankerous scowl that's permanently afixed to your pretty face?" At this remark, he did start scowling as if on cue. "Oh, Valen, has no one ever told you that your resting face is a fantastic brood? I want to paint it, if only I knew even the slightest thing about painting," she confessed a little wistfully.

He glared at her. "I don't have a—ugh. Annoying someone isn't a good enough reason to despise them." He decided changing the subject was the best way to stop picturing creepy eyeballs with hair growing out of them. It seemed like his options were to dig through garbage or indulge Binne a conversation. "At first I was suspicious of you because of your heritage, but someone pointed out to me that would be hypocritical. You're the first half-devil I've met on the Prime that hasn't tried to kill me. I should remember that the Seer chose to trust all of you, and asked I give you the benefit of the doubt. I simply haven't known you long enough to trust you with more." The more he talked, the more like digging through the avariel trash with the drow seemed like a better idea, so he walked off to check up on Solaufein's progress. His jaw was beginning to hurt. Even Imloth didn't make him talk that much.

It wasn't altogether bad, though. Solaufein did nonetheless find the mirror shard, and as unpleasant as his mood was likely to be until he next had a bath, after seeing more and more of the cursed city Valen was beginning to understand that this mirror - if it was indeed responsible for these peoples' fate - was too powerful to be left alone, where the Valsharess might happen on it. If the worst thing Valen had to suffer through to get the artifact was a few uncomfortable conversations, it was an easy price to pay to keep it out of the arch-devil's path. While Solaufein grumbled and cursed in his native tongue, Binne managed to pull him out of his slump and convinced them to investigate one of the other buildings - a large, domed structure that was unmistakably a temple, though how inhabited or useful it was in that capacity was in question, given the curse.

Since she was momentarily calling the shots while the drow was busy lamenting his hygiene, Valen found his lips curving in a faint smile in amusement to Binne. "Well, since the Savior is preoccupied, where to now, milady?" He asked her civilly.

The half-devil was shocked, but unguardedly delighted with the olive branch and flashed a brilliant smile. Haltingly, with darkening cheeks, she repeated, "Milady?" In a high, bewildered voice. She cleared her throat and it was back to its natural tone. "W-well, I suppose we should go fetch him before he kills someone else's son by accident . . . And then maybe check out that temple over yon, it smells. . ." She sniffed in its general direction across the cavern. "A bit off."

A bit off was one word for it. His mind would come back to that last smile of the cambion's in that moment though of unguarded and unexpected delight; it flitted into his mind and lingered when she fell, shaking and shivering in his arms as they set foot in the avariel's city's broken temple. Everything about the building set him on edge the moment they stepped in, but his gut reaction wasn't fast enough to prevent anything. In a shattered remnant of a once-bright sky goddess, corrupted by the poison of Talona, an emaciated Talontar had raised his gaze to all of them - flying first over Solaufein and then fixedly on the half-devil as he pointed straight to her, with a wicked smile on his pale lips. "Talona blesses her," he rasped. "Praise be to our Pestilent Mistress!" The ragged elf drew his arms to the ceiling, turning his face upward to where the sun wasn't in beatific joy.

Solaufein's brows drew together in anger as Enserric was ripped out of his sheath, and the drow stalked to the priest while Valen tried to help Binne stand with the kobold's largely useless assistance. He was closest, the one there in time, but the sudden nearness still set his hackles on end. "Them freckles," she muttered as she stared up at his nose with bleary eyes, and became limp, dead weight.

* * *

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

_Ele zhah ol zuch…_Why is it always mad wizards?  
_Siyo, xsa mina jal…_A pox on all their Houses!  
_Zhal udos toss mina…_come on they're like wet kittens, can't I just toss them in the river?  
_Nindolen ph'udossta…_dammit man, these are our guests!  
_Elgg uns'aa…_kill me now  
_Treemma naut…_by the power of Girl, you shall live  
_Do'zil al? Dos…_we go to the same church and you didn't even tell me  
_Xal usstan tel_…ttyl?  
_Udos inbal mzilt_…good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite because they're actually stag beetles and they WILL kill you  
_Alulove, Malla…_ciao, bella.  
_Rivvin__…_idiot humans  
_Dek'za…_a company of jackasses, which in Alaska is colloquially called a jackalope - and this is true, you can trust me


	5. Hero

I'm operating under the assumption that Deekin's thoughts are more coherent than the noises that come out of his face, and wanted to include at least a few chapters from his point of view.

* * *

DEEKIN

The one big thing everyone got wrong about Undrentide is that Deekin killed Heurodis. In the book, Boss and orc-man had slain the evil medusa and destroyed the mythal, and embarked upon a heroic escape at the last second by a dimensional door back to the Anauroch. Deekin had written himself out of the tale almost entirely. The reality was that Xanos and Solaufein hadn't stood a chance going toe-to-toe with the medusa, and they were most certainly about to die until Deekin was able to use stone-skin and appear frozen by her gaze, to fool her into thinking he was. When she turned her back on Deekin and dismissed him as a threat, the fatal strike happened. The bard caught the obsessed medusa entirely by surprise while she was monologuing like a storybook villain over her defeated foes. Boss was alive just long enough to help point orc-man's hands at the mythal and destroy it with fire; then, he had a laugh at the medusa's predicament and apologized for dragging Deekin into his messes before he fell unconscious. They had all died together like a team when the city fell. While he was dead and drifting in and out of Prime, Deekin had written the Doom song when reflecting on how very doomed everything always seemed to be around the Boss. Waking up in the Reaper's realm, he had never been more confused to be alive.

Aside from leaving out the secret of his resurrection, this was his biggest secret, because Boss was the hero of the book and that was the way it had to be. In the book, Solaufein killed the bad guy and got away just in time. People weren't going to buy a book without a handsome troubled hero on the front cover, and Deekin knew from all the stories of the Hero of the North that there was nothing people liked reading more than stories about morally challenged drow. The hatred people held of the drow was matched only by their morbid fascination. People naturally assumed 'Deekin Scalesinger' was ripping the Do'Urden saga off or lying outright about the whole story; he stated in his preface that it was 'based on true events.' If anything, the biggest problem for Deekin was figuring out how to cut down the details of Boss' insane life into a sensible narrative. So many things happened, and so many of them so very crazy. The entire fight at the end of the book was purely fiction, though some might argue that the entire book was. He wondered at his luck, running into a story head-first with Boss full of troubled drow. It was a bard's dream come to life, but he was struggling to try and outline it into a single story.

Truth was stranger than fiction could be; Deekin's hand was cramping up from all of the note taking that had gone down in the past couple weeks. Ever since they'd gone to Undermountain and found Binne to replace orc-man as a trigger-happy fire-slinger, more had happened in such a short space of time than Deekin had the ability to record. He was pretty sure this one would be a better book than the last one, if he could find a way to give it a happy ending. If they lived to see the happy ending. Then again, tragic stories sell just as much - though that book about the 'Hero of Neverwinter's' tragic romance was near absolute trash. The ending had been fun, when the 'Hero' set fire to Castle Never in protest for what happened to his lover Lady Aribeth, but Deekin highly doubted its legitimacy as a factual romantic gesture. By all reports, Lord Nasher was alive and well and had certainly not been assassinated. And if Ladybard Sharwyn's descriptions of the man were accurate, then the 'Hero' was hardly the sort of person a proud and chivalric figure like Aribeth would willingly associate with. And her supposed 'fall' to the dark side made so little sense - no, the story just had too many contextual holes for it to be accurate. Deekin had yet to encounter, nor perfect the authorial art of including a romantic sub-plot that enhanced the story rather than sabotaged it; even still troubling was finding the delicate balance of the real-life madness of Solaufein's adventures and conquests compared to their shorter, toned down, fictionalized versions.

He considered their current predicament. The Underdark, the drow city, and the avariel city would all make an excellent settings for their adventure - besieged by drow and cursed elves, it would be up to the heroes alone to liberate the day! Although the winged elves didn't really seem to want liberating, which was an unanticipated problem.

The elves of the strange island had deteriorated in health to the point where the Underdark had started to seem like their home, and they smelled and looked so bad that Deekin suspected they wouldn't fit in with normal elves anymore. Bodies had fallen in the streets where they had lay down and died, and not even been swept aside. There was no upkeep, no market, no bustle, no . . . Anything. No life. Women with tattered wings held rags to their chest and cooed to them, but there were no children. One man was walking on his hands and dragging his bloodied, stumped wings on the ground. Though they all had wings, none of them were in use.

It was a very troubling sight even by Deekin's standards, and he'd once seen Old Boss have a bowel movement that almost killed the whole kobold clan with its stink. Deekin felt very sorry for the avariel for a little while before remembering how snooty most elves were to him to his face - sure, they weren't all bad, and if dark elves like Boss could be good guys than maybe other elves could be bad guys.

After taking a long sniff and wrinkling her nose, demon-lady remarked, "this troublingly reminds me of home."

"Funny, I was about to say the same thing," General Shadowbreath mused in a light tone, belied by his semi-permanent scowl.

And there was a lot for Valen to scowl at as they explored the fallen city and crossed paths with more strange, backward-talking winged elves. Deekin realized right away this was more than a simple adventure. There didn't seem to entirely be a liberation complete enough for these sad elf-angels - whatever had happened to them had forever changed them, if they even remembered what they endured under the curse. The few that wandered around did not outnumber the ones that had fallen in the dilapidated and unlit streets, once radiant under the light of the sun and moon. Avariel weren't meant to exist in the Underdark, that much was obvious. The drow had adapted well over eons, but not these elves. They were meant for the surface winds and high mountaintops. Deekin couldn't help but wonder: if the curse were removed from them, what of them would remain?

Deekin asked this to himself the first time when he was talking to the medusa-lady librarian, whom he tried very hard to pretend to not be scared of. She hadn't seemed anything like the last medusa he met. The last one was a real piece of work, trying to raise Netherese artifacts and return the world to a less enlightened age so she could enslave it to her will, or some such tripe. The librarian by contrast was in tears and seemed very anxious to burn all her books, even though it made her unhappy for reasons she couldn't quite understand. She didn't seem to know she was a medusa at all, and was happy enough to be talked to as a person instead of ignored, like her husband who had to keep his distance to avoid her petrifying gaze. Nonetheless, when Deekin had asked politely, the librarian medusa handed him the enchanted shard of the mirror. It meant little to her. She was quite calm, and had promised Deekin upon parting that she'd maybe think about burning less books.

It was looking increasingly like there were more shards of the mirror around the city, but they clearly fit together in a way he didn't know of. Without any way of knowing the size or shape of the finished piece, they were wandering blind even with Deekin's darkvision belt. Deekin supposed it was just as well Boss was leading them; infravision had its perks even if it seemed to pain Solaufein back home.

After leaving the smoky library, Boss had chased down another shard that a strange angel-elf merchant had tossed out with the trash . . . At least Deekin hoped it was only trash. Seeing Boss dig around for magical artifacts wasn't exactly inspiring or heroic, so Deekin took the opportunity to sit down and catch up on his notes. So many things were always happening, he only hoped to keep track of them all.

Over his head, goat-lady and goat-man spoke in surprisingly civil tones. They would make a visually interesting pair at least, if the General could resist the urge to strangle her that he always seemed to be grappling with. That, or it was constipation - Deekin wasn't sure. The bard had a talk with the warlock when he noticed she seemed to have a lot of trouble talking to the goat-man, though why Binne was in knots about him was beyond the kobold's understanding. The tiefling was a force in battle, but decidedly lacking in personality, and insisted on calling Deekin a lizard despite clear and obvious evidence of his person-hood. He doubted the General would be able to pull his horns out of his backside long enough to realize Binne was just trying to be nice to him. He almost regretted encouraging her; Boss would have made a less difficult target, even if drow seemed generally immune to the entire concept of affection. The two had gotten along like egg-mates from the moment they'd met . . . (How much plot could Deekin stretch that relationship out into?)

Though their discussion seemed heated, it passed over Deekin's head pleasantly enough while he described the avariel in his log. As Valen Shadowbreath walked away, Binne seemed to bounce on her feet in joy. Deekin looked up at the tall, horned woman and squinted. "That's the most words he's said to me yet!" She crowed, and grinned down at the kobold with a hint of sharp canines. Rather than loom over him unpleasantly, he motioned for her to sit beside him. He'd been a little irritated at having to share space with her before, but that was mostly because she took up so much space. She was boisterous and treated Deekin consistently fairly, so it had stopped bothering him - unless she tried battering him with her tail again. That, he wouldn't tolerate. "I think it's working," the cambion went on, amber eyes glittering in humor as she sidled next to him on the ground. Deekin kept a careful eye on her fiendish tail, which kept its distance from him and curled around her leg happily. "You were right, master bard! I'm wearing him down like grated cheese!"

Deekin clucked in approval. "It be like Deekin tells you," he drawled out, not bothering to include syllables that his reptilian mouth found difficult to produce. It was nice to be recognized for his genius for a change, rather than treated like an idiot because of how he looked or spoke, and a small part of him basked in the warmth of her regard. He'd had his doubts at first, but she'd definitely been one of Boss' better finds, right up there with the relic and Deekin himself. "You have to nag some peoples into liking you if they already not be likings you. That how Deekin and orc-man become friends and he be _much_ grouchier than goat-man."

Binne sighed in relief. "Oh, it's lovely to have you here to help me. I feel as though I behave like an idiot around him!"

Deekin stared at her, wondering if she ever thought about the words that came out of her mouth before letting them escape. He always thought about his words carefully, due to the added difficulty of trying to say them in Common with a mostly serpentine mouth. "That be because you do be behaving like idiots around him," he informed her.

Rather than be insulted like most, she took the criticism with mollification. "Never known myself to stumble or be at a loss for words even when me mouth's runnin'. You're easily the smartest person I know, so there's no way that this can backfire. With your brains and my powers, imagine what else we could accomplish!"

Deekin closed his notebook with a thud and sighed contemplatively. It was nice to dream, but they were most certainly all doomed to a tragic, terrible, and timely end. It wouldn't hurt to appease her, though. "Eh, let's not get ahead of ourselves. First things is getting goat-man to like you, then Deekin finishes his sequel and then maybe Deekin think about buying castle and settling downs on pile of riches that Deekin will get for having a much higher gross percentage of royalties from publishers." It was the dream, really.

Binne nodded fiercely and stood up, gazing into the distance like her eyes were fixed on the future. "Ooh! You should get a good agent next time, and a good publicist like the one Volo has. I'll threaten him good for you, if you like," she offered slyly. "I don't like the thought of you not getting a fair deal."

The bard thought about this as he strapped his journal to the back of his pack, and straightened the straps so he could get back to carrying them. It seemed like Boss was nearly done, or at least was presently speaking to goat-man in undertone, so Deekin _hoped_ he was close to done. "Threatening is good," he commented. "Deekin might be needings some—"

He was disrupted from his fantasies about the large demon-lady scowling down his former publishers by the reappearance of his extremely disgruntled Boss, with the fire-haired and aqua-eyed General twitching his tail in an antsy way at his side. Solaufein silently raised up a grimy shard in his hands and his face contorted in misery. Deekin abandoned his pack-efforts and extended his clawed hand out to examine it; the drow was all too happy to be rid of the smelly object. Deekin wiped the shard on his tunic and examined it closely. "Fuck that fucking mal'ai for putting me through this," Boss grumbled, his eyes hardening into angry garnets.

Demon-lady wrinkled her nose. "Augh, you kinda stink," she criticized and waved a claws hand in front of her nose. "And I feel like you're overusing that word ever since I taught it to you."

"Do not. Start with me," Boss snapped, "not until I find a bath."

The tiefling had inched away from Boss and started to wrinkle his nose as well. "Well, he did find it in a pile of rotting food. At least I hope it was only rotting and not . . . previously digested."

Boss seemed even more miserable and even a little sad, at this. "I will never be clean again," he muttered pathetically. "It is all up in my nose, and under my fingernails . . ."

"Why didn't you just wear gloves?" Binne criticized.

Solaufein retorted somewhat heatedly: "Because I did not want iblith on my gloves!"

Deekin could empathize - his Old Boss had been a great deal less hygenic, but that was mostly due to the fact that Tymofarrar needed the kobolds help to clean himself after he got too fat. "Great, we have two!" Deekin crowed, trying to cheer Boss up. He began to clean the shard off with part of his tunic, knowing he could just wash it later. The Underdark seemed to have a strange effect on Boss, in that he was rapidly cycling through more emotions than Deekin knew his Boss to have possessed before: Boss laughed a little easier, even joked more - but also seemed more irritable.

A sudden thought occurred to Deekin as he looked down at the smelly fragment. "Er, how big do you think this mirror be?" He didn't want to be the only one thinking about it, at the very least. "These pieces seem pretty big. How big mirrors usually be?" He'd only seen one and it had been large, at the Yawning Portal - nearly ceiling-to-floor length - a depressing comparison.

Solaufein scoffed gutturally, in the back of his throat, and replied, "I am afraid to guess in the event I am right, and it is shattered into countless shards which have themselves become buried in shit.".

The cambion seemed his opposite in temperament and determined to cheer him up; her 'success' with goat-man had put a spring in her step. "Don't be a sourpuss, it'll be fine," she chided lightly.

Boss' response was a withering glare that seemed to bounce right off of Binne's radiant mood. "You should be less careless with your words. Halaster may still be yet listening! Who knows what you may have already wrought?!" Boss' hands rose up into the air as his eyes widened with frustration.

Demon-lady's eyes narrowed, and Deekin found his head whipping between the two in interest - he'd never seen anyone but the old dwarf manage to scold Boss before, and Boss almost never lost his temper with anyone. Only Heurodis goading him about the old dwarf Drogan had managed to make him so much as twitch, and the gods all knew that Xanos had certainly tried every day to get under Solaufein's skin. The drow was always calm, measured, and sure in his actions. Only now did Solaufein seem precariously close to losing it. Perhaps all the portal-traveling had finally gotten to him? "Oi, now you're starting to sound loony," Binne chided gently in a fond but exasperated tone, earning herself one of Solaufein's most irritated, patented glares. "Now you're just mad because you're stinky. As far as we know, this has nothing to do with any mad wizards."

Yes, Boss was definitely angry. "Of course it does!" He rasped out. His voice seemed to get raspier rather than louder with the loss of his composure; he had not ever raised it, that Deekin could remember. It struck Deekin that perhaps Solaufein did not know how to raise his voice, or perhaps couldn't. "It always does!" He insisted. "No avariel would enter the Underdark unless it involved some kind of-of wizarding! It is always the fault of some wizard. I would even bet my sword that Halaster himself has brought this calamity upon them." The calamity in question he gestured with his hands all around them to the f

At his belt, Enserric the Sword chimed in, "Not that I enjoy being the subject of a bet, but it does have the big goon written all over it." Deekin supposed the sword would know, having been in Undermountain longer than any of them.

Demon-lady went on, heedless of Solaufein. "We're already doing what he wanted us to - and he slapped up with a hard geas, so where else could we possibly go?" She reasoned. Deekin never ceased to be surprised when demon-lady made some kind of sense, but she had her moments. Perhaps his surprise was just because she, like him, didn't seem like the sort of source you'd expect genius from. "Only way out is forward, so there's no point in putting any blame on anyone. Besides, we can't let Varshalessy get these shards, can we?"

Solaufein didn't even blink. "Valsh—no," he cut himself off and bowed his head in self-admonishment. "You know you are wrong, why am I bothering to correct you?"

"Why do anything?" the cambion chirped back. "Look, Solaufein, the only thing I can think of worse than looting shite for valuables is getting through a bunch of shite only to find out at the end that someone else beat you to it!" Deekin suspected she was speaking from personal experience.

Boss grumbled. "Why do you make sense when you have no right to?" He complained.

Demon-lady's tone was firm. "Hey, that's enough grousin' out of you, or I'll kick you into the next, most coldest, most non-poisonous river I find!"

To Deekin's amazement, Boss took the berating and stalked off at a distance to grumble out-loud to himself in Ilythiiri about the myriad ways the entire universe could go fuck itself. "Huh, Deekin never see anyone boss arounds Boss like that," the bard blurted out in awe. He stared up at the cambion in surprise. "Maybe I should be calling yous Boss-Lady now."

Binne's response was preceded by a derisive snort. "I'm no lady and just as surprised as you are that he listened."

Goat-man, who had been silent the entire time, decided it was time to chime in. He cleared his throat as Deekin did his best to wipe the smelly shard and stick it in his pack far away from his food. "Well, since he is preoccupied, where to now, milady?" Of course he had turned to Boss-Lady and not to Deekin; he sniffled a little, but decided to let goat-man have this one. It hurt no one to pretend that Boss-Lady was in charge for a little while, especially because it was the nicest thing he'd heard come out of the tiefling's suspicious mouth so far.

Binne was just as baffled, but infinitely more pleased. "Milady?" She repeated dubiously, and her skin darkened somewhat subtly. "W-well, I suppose we should go fetch him before he kills someone else's son by accident," she reasoned even more reasonably, "and then maybe check out that temple over yon, as it smells a bit . . . Off." She had gestured to a domed building some distance away that reeked of feces, slime, and other things that reminded Deekin uncomfortably of home. He found it odd, that they should all feel so connected to a place for presumably different reasons, though why a cursed slime-hole felt like 'home' to the others was speculation. He had no idea what neighborhood Valen had grown up in, but if it was anything like the cursed island, Deekin was going to have to re-examine his judgment of the General.

The second that they even so much as set a toe into the temple, bad stuff started to doom them right away. It was probably some kind of new record-breaking level of doom. They stepped inside and suddenly demon-lady had collapsed into a heap and hooked her horn on Valen's armor from dizziness, and the tiefling practically tripped over Deekin to catch her from falling on top of them both. Deekin tumbled backwards, pack over tail, and scrambled to right himself.

Boss, seeing all of this, immediately drew Enserric to threaten a priest that stood in the center of the temple, standing on a dais and pointing a dirty, shaking finger at the cambion. He uttered something about Talona, whom Deekin knew off-hand to be a bad god, before the bard was preoccupied with simply trying to get out of everyone's underfoot. He needed to be where the action was, which was next to Boss who was threatening the sickly elven priest with his talking sword.

"Ooh, let's kill him!" Enserric was goading as the depths of his blade shined forth a blood-red light. The unlit temple took on an eerie glow as Enserric' red enthusiasm shone in the same as Boss' eyes in the spectrum of heat, making eerie crimson light dance over the stonework and fallen and rotting bodies littering the temple floor. "I've never had poisonous avariel before!"

"Undo what you have done," Solaufein was demanding, his low rasp cutting under and also over Enserric's chiming.

"Wait, what happened?" Deekin wondered out loud, confused. "Deekin miss something. He did something to Boss-Lady?" All the doom had happened so suddenly that he'd had no time to process it.

"I feel runny," the one in question complained from behind them, still struggling to stand despite the General's support. "Am I in Undermountain?" She wondered blearily, looking all around her. "Did I die again? I f-fe-feel so c-co-cold."

Deekin turned back to Boss and the sick elf as Boss raised his sword so that it edged the elven cleric's throat. The elf had clearly once been an avariel, but his wings were . . . Missing. Or had been cut, it wasn't sure. The entire temple was a rotting, hideous monument to Talona full of decaying corpses of animals and humans, and here at the center of it was the temple's sole tender. Sickly, slender, and grinning sadistically, the frail Talontar cut a fine malicious figure. What had happened to the others, when this one had been warped into serving poisonsous Talona? Deekin shuddered to think.

"You," Solaufein commanded in a tone that chilled little Deekin's blood, which was impressive because he was a reptile. Boss was definitely getting into drow character: "will explain what you have done, and quickly fix it before I kill you and defile your corpse." His eyes reflected back Enserric's light, turning them into rubies. Deekin started making mental notes of his observations, and started singing the Doom song in his head as Boss got serious. The bard had no doubt that this would be a great moment in the book.

The cleric smiled, but it was a toothy grimace - even worse than when Old Boss smiled. "She has been chosen by Talona to endure her Trials," the ragged elf spoke in a reedy, high keen. "This is a great honor. My Lady only picks the strongest of the Faithless, to test them."

Enserric cackled and sent his crimson depths churning and sputtering out light as Solaufein stepped in closer, but the elf gave off no indication of any fear. Deekin thought this wasn't very smart - it was good to be afraid of Boss sometimes. "My sword is quite bloodthirsty," he uttered quietly. "There is nothing more he loves than drinking the life from my enemies. You will die a slow, painful death if you do not remove this curse from her at once."

The elven Talontar blinked. "It cannot be done," he stated simply. "She has been chosen by my goddess. No matter how slowly I die, her condition will progress. Only Talona's will can spare her now!"

The cambion had begun to complain about the temperature and seemed to be clinging to the very uncomfortable goat-man for warmth. Deekin suspected she was hamming it up a little since it was the most attention she'd received from the tiefling - at least, the most positive attention yet. The General's tail betrayed his feelings, twitching anxiously back and forth as hers curled in misery. Deekin's own tail, he noticed, he used more for balance while demons tended to emote through them.

Solaufein lowered his sword slightly, to Enserric's disappointment. "A curse? Affliction? Poison?"

The Talontar's grimace became a subtle, if sadistic grin. "An affliction of the mind, body, and the spirit. A cascade failure of every bodily and mental system that end in madness and final death." Behind them, the cambion sucked in a horrified breath and fell to the ground finally as the General got tired of propping her up. He hovered over her in anxiety while Boss grit his teeth; Boss' sword stayed steady as the priest continued: "The light of the Lady Silverhair surrounds you utterly, pale here in the dark but too careful a guard, deflecting any weakness from you . . . But your Faithless Friend has drawn the Mistress of Poison's eye as a lighthouse draws in stray ships. She will be cured when she survives the Trials - _if _she survives them - and free to leave."

Enserric was a blur in the air for a moment as he drew blood at the priest's throat - there was actually panic in the Talontar's eyes when he clenched at his throat in alarm and stumbled back, but only a thin line of droplets spilled between his fingers, nowhere near a fatal wound. Boss' sneer was unimpressed, but Enserric was full of mirth. "Ah, the scent of elf-blood in the morning! This one's not too healthy though," the sword observed in a disappointed tone. Deekin made a mental note to ask Enserric what different kinds of blood tasted like. It wasn't a question he'd ever expected he'd have to ask of an intelligent sword, but he'd led an interesting life. "Tinge of some sort of bitter rot. Honestly wouldn't mind if the dagger took this one."

A sound somewhere between a shudder, cough, and sigh erupted behind them with some force. Binne had managed to stand on her own too feet, but her skin had noticeably paled and developed a clammy sheen. She approached, unassisted by Valen just as the tiefling rested his hand on his flail and followed sedately. "That tickled fierce," she managed out in a hoarse voice. "Alright, you bleeding nincompoop, tell me about this here Trials."

Boss' tone was disappointed, and insistent. "There will be no Trials," he decreed. He rested Enserric's tip once again on the frail elf's bird-like collarbone. "You will cure her or die now."

"Or will be beaten to a pulp and _then _die," goat-man added threateningly, stepping up beside Boss with his heavy flail clinking in his hand.

"Or both," Boss tacked on, "and then I will resurrect you so he can kill you again."

Goat-man seemed to be on the same wavelength as Boss. "Sure, I'd say this detour is at least worth three deaths," Valen appraised. "Maybe even four."

Deekin was rather impressed by the doubly intimidating duo - the pale, scarred, crimson-haired veteran tiefling in his gleaming green mithral and Boss, skin of midnight in a shock of white hair, in adamantine so dark it seemed to swallow light - both training their angry red-glowing glowers on the comparatively tiny elf. The Talontar was utterly unimpressed, though how he managed to be so was beyond Deekin. "Killing me changes nothing," the elf repeated, spine straightening in defiance, although his thin fingers worried the slight wound Solaufein had given him at his throat, to Boss' amusement. "She must endure the Trials if she wishes to live."

Deekin doubted that very much, but without knowing what the disease was or what form the antidote took, he didn't see a way of getting Binne out alive without cooperating. She seemed to think the same thing, so she knocked Enserric aside lightly with a careful claw from one hand as she stepped up and nodded gruffly to the cleric. "Aye, aye, I'll do it!" She agreed begrudgingly, "though you should probably tell me what they actually are before I do them, in case I do them wrong. Please don't say it's a riddle contest," she pleaded, "I'm rubbish at those."

"Deekin could help if it was," the bard added in encouragingly. It was a brave thing for her to step up and do, after all. "Deekin have to learn most riddles that there are just to keep Old Boss entertained enough to not eats little Deekin."

"You're a fountain of useless knowledge, master ba—" she had been about to say, but dissolved into coughs. He patted her leg, not sure if he should be looking for potions to feed her or if they were a waste of time, with such a sudden illness.

Over her, the avariel voiced, "none may assist her in the Trials. She must endure them alone." Solaufein clucked his tongue against his teeth gently and raised the sword to the elf's collarbone when the priest tried to move so much as an inch by leaning away.

Goat-man was pretty incensed with goat-lady, though, and turned on her in frustration. "This is ridiculous," the tiefling ground out through gritted teeth. "You don't have to do this. What are you trying to prove? Playing into his game is a waste of our time!"

The cambion was angry when she regained her breath. "That I'm not willing to kill someone afflicted by a curse for cursing me in turn?" She stated this like it was the most obviously logical conclusion, and that goat-man was silly for not thinking of it in the first place. "That two wrongs don't make a right? That I can take care of my own messes? That hitting your problems should always be the last way you try to solve them, because it means they can't be solved any other way? That basic _logic?_" Now she wasn't making any sense at all and has lost Deekin. "Point me to your lousy trials, man!" She demanded of the elf. "Time's wasting, you heard the General!"

Boss looked very confused, and somewhat upset, but sheathed Enserric to the priest's visible relief. It seemed he'd done a good job of pretending not to be rankled by the drow, but there was definitely something about Solaufein that intimidated him. Deekin wasn't sure if it was the big scary sword or not. "Why are you doing this?" He stressed of her with a frown of concern.

Rather than answer him, she directed her attention to the cleric with her bleary, but still fairly focused gaze. "You've got one of those shards, aye? The mirrored ones?"

The elf replied slowly. "One such came into my possession, shortly before my conversion to Talona," he explained. "Should you desire it, I can give it to you after the Trials. Or to your companions, should you fail. I certainly have no need of it."

She nodded, like she had suspected this. "This was once a temple of, who was it?" She looked down to Deekin, who had first spotted the logo on the outside of the temple before they'd entered.

"I will not speak her name!" The formerly good cleric hissed. "It is forbidden!"

"Oh, flying elf lady!" Deekin remembered. "Aerdrie Faenya. She's one of the good elf ones, I think, like drow moon lady."

"It is forbidden!" The elf cried, despairingly, and placed his hands dramatically over his ears.

"It's safe to say we're seeing him on an off day," the cambion easily assessed and rolled her shoulders back. "Now, onto some trials!"

The mangled elf pointed to his side where three pull-chains attached to bells were suspended from the ceiling some distance to his right and their left. "To begin," he instructed, "simply pull one of these bells and you will be transported - and only you - to the center of my circle." Behind the elf's dais was a cleared area of the temple floor, still filthy and covered with what looked like paint but was most likely dried blood. Around it was drawn a strange magical circle that itself was littered with what Deekin hoped was only the blood of his enemies. "That is all. There will be several subsequent Trials, between three and five, I think. You will fight a monster each time whose strength is chosen to be matched to yours, at your best. You must defeat them as you are at your worst."

"Lovely," the cambion bit out in a complimentary tone with a sarcastic grimace. "Let's get started!"

Boss had some objections to this, and threw his arm in front of her to grab her attention. Binne had already reached forth a hand to pull one of the levers and as the bell rung, she disappeared in a pop of displaced air and flash of white light. She reappeared inside of the circle but a moment later. Angrily, Boss tried to step into the circle but was repelled repeatedly by an invisible force.

"I really don't understand her at all," Valen observed passively. "All of the time."

Solaufein cursed a lot in Ilythiiri and gave up trying to get in just as Deekin pulled out his journal and started to record them with wide eyes. Normally he'd look for a way to break the circle, but goat-lady seemed determined to die and the circle repelled even Boss . . . then his Boss grew silent.

Across from Binne's place in the circle had appeared a wicked looking hound with a hide so dark it might have been made from shadows, and so large its muzzle met her chest. Its mouth lolled open and its breath was steam, as if its insides were made of fire. Its teeth were long and wicked, like gleaming razors, and its eyes were hollow voids. As it lifted its snout to sniff at its newfound prey, it tilted its head up and let out deep and menacing growl.

"That's a hell-hound," the General assessed in a clinical, detached voice. Deekin had found his legs unable to move after seeing the monstrous creature. but the tiefling walked calmly passed the bard and began to shout advice at the cambion in the ring. "It's too fast for spells," he called over, "just run! Try to hit it when it tries to use its breath!"

"Run where, Valen?!" She looked over at the tiefling incredulously and gestured to the circle, just as the hell-hound leapt into the air and toward her throat.

"Waela!" Solaufein snarled and slapped on the barrier with his fist to get her attention. Strangely, light skittered across the magic of the barrier, causing the priest to give a startled jump. The illness had clearly addled her senses, but Binne had enough wherewithal to duck in time and run away from the hell-hound's snapping, powerful jaws. It crouched low and growled as she rolled away and turned to face it again.

"None may assist with the trials! Verbally, or physically! I will not warn you again," the tiny, poisonous cleric threatened, earning himself a cascade of powerful glares.

Deekin panicked momentarily when he saw the cambion stumble and fall backward, but then something brilliant happened. From the ground, she'd pulled out the whip they'd taken from that evil priestess and put it to good use, striking the hound across the face and ear with a sharp crack and earning a pained howl. The enraged hell-hound lunged forward within predictable stabbing range and died, startlingly and suddenly in a cloud of dust as Binne clenched a spear of bright green entropic energy in her other hand and pierced the creature's hide right through its chest, and out of its throat.

As suddenly as it had begun, the first Trial ended and the hell-hound dissolved into a pile of black ash. The cambion was instantly teleported outside the circle, still covered in hell-hound soot and sitting on her elbows. She blinked, breathed, and then sneezed repeatedly. Boss offered her a hand to help her stand up, but as she did a wave of dizziness caused her to falter back down to her knees. She groaned and clutched at her horns, shivering and shaking. Boss patted her back in a comforting gesture Deekin had only ever seen him do to Deekin himself before. "So you are aware," Boss told her, "should this progress beyond what I deem too far, I will kill the elf." It wasn't really a threat, more just an explanation of what was going to happen. Boss' threats and explanations often sounded like the same thing.

After catching her breath, demon-lady sighed. "I realize that," she croaked quietly.

He helped her stand again, though more slowly this time. "Do you?" He wondered. "Look around us." Deekin saw what Boss meant - the streets of the avariel city were nightmarish by themselves, but the Temple looked and smelled like one of the worst circles of Hell. Bodies of drow, monsters, and even a few winged corpses had piled in the corners. Flies, rot, and worse . . . Deekin had been breathing through his mouth the entire time out of necessity. Binne took it all in with bleary, wide, and trembling eyes. Whether it was because of her illness or what she was seeing, Deekin couldn't say. "There is no coming back from this, abbil," Solaufein finished gently when her eyes circled back to his.

She shook her head stubbornly. "Let me do my bloody thing and then you can do yours if mine doesn't work. If I die, I die," she decided firmly.

Boss' expression twisted into something between derision and amusement. "You may not care if you die," he pointed out.

Her responding smile was watery. "Don't get soft on me now or I'll get emotional all over your new speedy boots." Boss took a step back from her immediately, as if daring her to try. Without even so much as a glance toward the Talontar, she pulled the next pull-chain and disappeared with the tinkling of a bell back into the circle.

Her next opponent was a sword spider smaller than the one Deekin had befriended. Being fast was its only advantage, as having eight legs only made it easier for her to stumble it with her whip and spear it through with another entropic bolt. It happened quite quickly and less dramatically than the previous fight that the bard was almost disappointed, knowing he'd have to stretch out the description of each fight for at least half a page if he wanted it to be any good.

He felt himself a little selfishly annoyed with the cambion when she teleported back, right up until she fell over and vomited her entire stomach's contents onto the grimey floor. Then, he felt bad for her all over again.

"This is just how you look on Seer's temple floor, Boss, only more vomit!" Deekin chimed to Solaufein, trying and failing to find the bright side in all the grossness.

"I know," Solaufein stated dryly.

"Deekin just making _sure _you know."

Boss' eyes narrowed. "I know, Deekin. You have told me repeatedly. Stop telling me."

As Binne finally stopped vomiting, Valen was the one who was unfortunately nearest to her and if Deekin wasn't mistaken - that was a look of concern, not constipation swimming in the tiefling's bright blues. A first for the prickly General, by the kobold's reckoning. He helped her up, since she seemed to be needing a lot of help with that in the past half hour. Deekin had never seen someone get so sick so quickly. "You can stop this any time," goat-man reminded her carefully. "Solaufein had a point."

Binne seemed to have found a point, but it wasn't the same one everyone else had arrived at. She blinked one golden eye after the other and leaned somewhat to the left. "_Youuu_ gan poyn me anywhar," she slurred flirtatiously, and tapped his chest armor with a claw. "You—an me—to the pub, an messr' fixin' ladle fur a ha'pint dun the boggie." She seemed to lose her train of thought halfway through whatever she was about to say, and only succeeded in making the General extremely uncomfortable and confused, probably setting back all the work she'd done wearing him down earlier, no doubt. Deekin couldn't resist the disappointed sigh; she'd asked for his help with this project, only to set back their work through no fault of her own.

Valen's practically translucent skin made the blood rushing to his face extremely obvious. "W-what?" Was all he could blurt out in his fluster. Boss had tried to approach her from behind and reached out to steady her as she had begun swaying in place, but Binne stumbled back and accidentally hit Solaufein on the forehead with her horn, causing Boss to reel back hissing in pain. In between trying to reach the next pulley and apologizing to Boss' face, she couldn't seem to muster the right combination of sounds to form words. "Augh! Oh-uh-mm-ahm sorry, Solau-ff-fai-ah-furgot . . . Meh body dinnae . . ." At a loss or too delirious, it wasn't clear - but she reached for the next bell all the same before anyone could stop her and pulled it with enough force that the bell actually snapped and she swung backwards on it with her full weight. She disappeared into the air in a flash of light with a startled expression.

She teleported mid-fall to the ground in the middle of the circle, rolling directly into an angry and howling ice troll. "Oooh, angry," she commented on the troll's disposition like it was artwork. The hungry and angry ice troll, seeing what looked like food delivered straight to it, swatted down at her with his fist like a baker trying to nab a rat with his pin.

Deekin's little heart leapt into his throat as he watched the troll deliver the fatal blow to the cambion. Her previous wins had been so quick and unexpected that the sudden gravity of her loss had glued the bard's feet to the ground in panic. Then, he let out a held-in breath of relief as it became clear that the troll had missed, or she'd moved enough for its fist to hit the empty ground, and then it reeled back in agony as its face became lit aflame by a spell from the warlock's fingers.

It was an abyssal chant that devolved into a mad, insane cackle that set loose a jet of searing hot flame into the ice-troll's face, who panicked at the sight of its most hated enemy - fire - and began to flail about in agony. This presented a new problem for the cambion howling in deranged laughter who was just now realizing it as she stagged to her feet dizzily and seemed to calm down. Her eyes had taken on a pale glow in her sickness, and though she swayed in place, the bright fire from her spell still licked at her clawed hands in anticipation. As the troll reeled and screeched, trying to pat out the flames, it bounced off of the sides of the arena and back toward the cambion who slashed at it and stumbled sideways to make room for the lumbering monster.

She had begun to speak to someone invisible, or was just muttering to herself, as she stumbled around the circle away from the angry, on-fire troll. As it fell to the ground in an attempt to roll out the flames, the warlock collapsed against the edge of the crackling circle. She extended her hand toward it as if in a beckoning gesture, and then clenched her fist as the flames grew in size and became white-hot, quickly disintegrating the troll. Soon enough, it joined the hellhound's soot-pile.

Binne teleported and fell back. She quickly rolled over into a heap on the ground in a fit of coughing just as Enserric leapt back into Boss' hands. Boss approached the Talontar with deadly certainty. "The Trials are over," he declared.

The sickly, mangled elf sighed in disappointment. "That is a pity," he confessed. "There is but one more test for her. After this, she will have earned her cure. Her strength is great, so Talona's test must meet it. But, kill me if you must. It changes nothing, and she will permanently die."

Deekin had found himself trying to help the tired, sickly warlock stand and noted the blood that had spilled from her lips in bubbles to the floor. She'd not suffered terribly many wounds - mostly nicks, near scrapes, but the disease was taking its toll on her body and mind. He doubted that she could take much more without making a deadly mistake that would cost her life. Luck or skill, or some balance between the two had caused her to coast through the few battles with swift ferocity. Deekin was a bard, but he didn't have the words to reassure her, and her eyes were half-vacant and still glowing. At least the fire had stopped. "Boss-Lady a lot tougher than Deekin thought," he complimented instead.

Her responding smile was weak. "I'm a'right now, luv. 'Tis only the Wailing. Lil' shadow goblins are gone . . . And the grigs in me eye-corns twe're testin' me patience 'ave fled the coup."

Solaufein glanced over mid-threat in confusion at her statement. As usual Boss was distracted by the little things, like grammar. "Eye-corns?"

Binne stood with the kobold's support and straightened her spine, though her tail betrayed her state, lackadaisically swaying in place. "Never you mind that, prettypants!" She told him, and smiled in spite of her condition. Solaufein predictably glanced down at his greaves in confusion. "I'll take the job, and don't you worry - I'll do her right!" Her words, as usual, only made half-sense to the bard, but her intention was clear. He didn't have the physical speed - even if he had speedy boots - to stop her from grabbing one of the last in-tact pull-chains, and Valen slid to intercept just as she teleported in his fingers. Both men uttered a loud curse toward the ceiling simultaneously. Deekin sighed wearily.

"Will the circle fall if I kill you?" Boss questioned, turning on the elf again menacingly.

Whatever the Talontar had been in his previous life, in this one he'd stopped caring about anything at all. That, or he was simply insane. "Feel free to find out," he offered, looking down Enserric's gleaming blade apathetically. He smiled at his death. "I do not fear you, for my goddess awaits me."

"Not yours," Boss promised and pressed in the sword point to the hollow of the avariel's throat. "Mine."

Meanwhile, Binne fell into a coughing fit in the arena as she faced down a mirror image of herself.

It took Deekin a second to figure out that it wasn't a mirror - that was an illusion - but a duplicate of what appeared to be herself. Enemy or not, it made no threatening moves and simply stood and watched her, with familiar yet distant eyes. The colors were the same in both of them, but the hair, the build - something about the image was decidedly off. Without proper lighting, Deekin couldn't see what, but Boss' stilled in his elf-murdering to watch.

As she bent over, wracked by loud coughs and spitting up blood through her fingers, the figure approached slowly, carefully, eyes darting around the room and taking in the details of its surroundings. It lingered on the angry, sword-drawn Solaufein facing down the cursed priest for a moment longer than the others, before swiftly bending down to Binne's level and . . .

Helped her stand up and supported her struggles with comforting familiarity. Deekin would have to search for a long time to describe his feeling at that exact moment in the literature-edition of these adventures. It was a cardinal rule of adventuring: the worst monsters always took on the most comforting guises.

"What a fine state we're in na, ya daft bint," the mirror image spoke to Binne in a voice that was decided not a mirror image. Too deep and masculine. Deekin instantly realized he'd made a mistake that he'd often made when presuming the gender of surfacers - this wasn't a mirror image, but a male demon of similar characteristics. The asymmetrical copy was younger than her, but those were about the only differences - they stood at the same height and build with similar hair length and same colors, and what traits in her that seemed masculine seemed feminine on the other demon's face. "Takin' on a god o' poison on her own turf - 'o does that? Only ye'd be mad enough. Now ye've gone an' gotten us both kilt, wit yer bull-dogged-back-arse-headed-ness!"

Binne seemed to be having some trouble believing what was in front of her. She muttered under her breath, and reached to touch the other as she simultaneously stepped back in fear. "You're not here," she kept insisting. "Can't be. Can't be!" She repeated herself, as if this mantra would make reality bend to her will. Deekin wasn't sure how exactly an elven cursed priest in the Underdark managed to find the one thing in all creation that was capable of unnerving Boss-Lady, but found it indeed he had. He'd seen Binne look that scary whip-priestess in the eyes and unflinchingly call the woman a 'wankstain,' whatever that meant (Deekin assumed it had something to do with the big and hairy people and what went down in their pants, which they were often concerned about). He'd seen her stand up to Halaster on behalf of Boss straight from her most recent death (only to slip and fall in a pool of her own blood, but Deekin was considering leaving that bit out of the final edition even though it was terribly funny).

"I'm as real you," the imperfect copy insisted, and Deekin - and Boss and goat-man, judging by the scrutinizing glares they'd formed - doubted this realism very much. "It hasn't been tha' long since I died. Dun tell me ye've forgotten me." The copy tilted his head to the side. Binne continued shaking her head in denial, and in her refusal she bumped against the outer limit of the magical circle. The elven Talontar smiled sickly, pleased.

"She can't make me, she can't make you," she insisted deliriously and clutched at her throat desperately and shook her head. "You're not _real__._"

The demonic copy shrugged. "I feel real enough. It's not personal, ya know. If you die here instead of me, I get to finally be free to live again." Then, the copy grinned in perfect mimicry of Binne's own infectious smile. "But, it was good seein' ya, Bee! Missed ya, wouldn't wanna be ya."

A blade that hadn't been - it emerged out of air, seemingly from nothing, was in its hand. Faster than the ice troll or the hellhound, faster than the sick and delirious cambion could react, the imperfect copy's hand struck and drove a sharp length of curved dagger into the side of her ribs, straight through the leather and under the adamantine scales that had protected her. Binne let out a sharp cry and fell, her expression frozen in numb disbelief, to her knees.

Boss had been watching, waiting, eyes focused not on the Talontar but on the magic circle itself ever since the strange copy had appeared. The moment its hands struck, a furious snarl crossed the drow's face that Deekin had seen once before lit by a mythal above a floating city. Boss pointed Enserric at the circle and struck at it - once, then twice. Enserric seemed brighter in that moment, and there was but a flash of light and a victorious cry from the sword as the circle was dispelled with a powerful blow from the warrior's that seemed to finally get a surprised reaction out of the mangled elf. It was the only expression other than twisted amusement and apathy that had crossed the broken avariel's face.

The Talontar stumbled and swayed in place as his protection spell dissolved along with his concentration, as Solaufein leapt into the circle to the odd copycat that was kneeling over Binne's hyperventilating form. The creature had pulled the blade out and was backing away from the drow on dancing feet, with a grin. "_So_ many choices!" It crowed in that strange voice, and then it changed. Deekin had met druids, shape-shifters before - those who walked in the skin of animals and the two-legs. Dragons did so often, so it wasn't a strange sight to watch something change form, but it still surprised him a little whenever it happened unexpectedly.

As the cambion shivered and crawled away from the circle in a steadily growing pool of her own blood, Solaufein charged the shifting shape-shifter striking just as the doppelganger solidified into a perfect mirror of the Seer, holding the dagger that elongated in its hands into a sword. His blow rang out as Enserric clashed against the creature, and a clarion clang echoed through the temple as their blades struck blow for blow.

A roar to Deekin's right alerted him to the enraged presence of goat-man, who had taken it upon himself to throttle the mangled elf for information. Deekin opened his mouth to criticize this plan (it hadn't worked very well for them the first time), but he felt his talents were best served in a less verbal arena - besides, given the General's eyes red-shifting into a sinister glow, he didn't think the tiefling would be willing to listen to reason. As Boss battled the doppelganger, driving it from the circle but nonetheless it managed to match him even in the Seer's silken skirts, Deekin occupied himself with dragging the bleeding cambion out of harm's reach and somewhere they could treat her wound properly.

She was half conscious when the kobold got to her, but too heavy for him to move on his own and having her assist him seemed to only make the wound in her side bleed even more. "Th-th-th-th—" she was trying to say something but couldn't get it out. Between the haze of the illness and the wound, Deekin was sure that she wouldn't last long, and he realized there wasn't anything he could do with any of the supplies for this.

"Wish we'd brought a real cleric," he mumbled to himself, feeling overwhelmed. "Cleric would fix this up quick! But no, Boss had to leave nice elf lady behind. 'Too clumsy,' he said. Bah! Like Boss-Lady be any better!"

Boss-Lady rambled incoherently; Deekin shushed her and put pressure on the wound. "Everything be working out, Boss-Lady, if you just stays awake," the kobold assured with confidence he didn't have, but could successfully fake thanks to an enchanted ring he had on that helped him focus his bardic abilities. Peripherally he could hear the fight between the doppelganger wearing the Seer's face and Solaufein; he was sure it was suitably epic, and felt a little bummed that he wouldn't be able to observe the fight for posterity from his position. He'd just have to make up a good sword fight for the audience in the book version. "Er, everything be just fine. See? Boss be beating doppelganger and goat-man is—" Deekin turned his head to glance over where Valen's red-headed form was bent over the unconscious Talontar as he furiously rifled through the priest's robes. "Goat-man be busy," he summarized.

"Y-y-you're a b-bad l-liar," she somehow managed to spit out. "L-least I . . ."

"Deekin!" The General suddenly called, and Deekin looked up only to be startled by goat-man's sudden near-ness. He would've leapt back in surprise for a few reasons (had the General actually used his name again? Wow - and was that actually concern on Valen's face? Wow!), but he had a patient in his lap to tend to and so only let out a startled 'AWK!'

"General! You scares little Deekin!" He chided. "You has the antitode? Ooh, gimme, gimme," he demanded, opening his scaled palm and closing it a few times. The General placed a small white phial in Deekin's outstretched hand with an irritated expression. Warily, the tiefling stepped back as Deekin quickly examined the vial. "Well, it work or not, we finds out soon." Between the tiefling and the kobold, they managed to tilt Binne's shaking head back and poured the contents of the little vial down her throat. He could only hope that it was meant to be orally ingested and not administered some other strange way.

Her breathing evened out quite quickly, but the coughing didn't stop, and the blood continued to gush out of her side. "Well, at least she can die of wound now and not of poison," Deekin pointed out as his uniquely positive disposition forced him to find the upside in every situation. The bard caught Valen's uneasy gaze. "Deekin needs to get to heals from bag—"

"—I'll keep pressure on the wound, but hurry," the General immediately assured and moved to trade positions. The cambion winced but for a moment before Valen's gloved hand pressed down on top of her own, on top of the wound. "Don't move," Valen all but commanded her, but Deekin was pretty sure that Boss-Lady was too far gone to hear. She had begun to twitch and seemed unable to hold still, between her shivering and the spasms of pain.

As Deekin went up to his elbows in his bag of holding to get the potion, he briefly turned his attention to the doppelganger battle. Solaufein had pressed his opponent to the corner of the room; though the doppelganger's physical resemblance to the Eilistraeen high priestess was uncanny, nothing else about the Seer's image fitted with the tranquil lady that they'd all come to so quickly admire. The copy was vicious and fercious where the Seer was graceful and genteel. It wasn't long before the doppelganger made a mistake when it changed form again, realizing perhaps that its current skin had no adverse affect on its superior opponent. Its hair grew out darker, more golden than white and hung down in braids just as her ears shortened and her skin lightened. The transformation remained incomplete, between two people, and dissolved into a featureless gray mask as Enserric impaled the doppelganger from behind. Solaufein cleaved up with the sword, rending through the copy with a deep gash. It let out a surprised gasp before falling over, dead.

The kobold's claws found purchase on a bottle he'd haggled Gulhrys down from just as Solaufein kicked the gray humanoid off of his blade and rushed over to them. It all happened so quickly that the drow wound up at the dying cambion's side before Deekin did, and assisted Valen in holding her down while Deekin administered a the potion. She spat it back up and a bloody foam spilled out of her mouth as her eyes rolled back up in her head. "She bit her tongue," Valen commented on this like it was the weather, not that Deekin remembered what weather felt like down in the bowels of the earth.

As Solaufein knelt to their level while Valen and Deekin did their best to hold her still, the drow closed his eyes in concentration, and a light from his ungloved hand generated at the ends of his fingertips that reminded Deekin of the Seer's healing spell. It was something the little bard knew Solaufein had learned while under Drogan's tutelage, though he'd only seen the drow use a handful of times - on the Bedine in the Anauroch, on Xanos after the lich, on Deekin himself in Undrentide, and twice now to Boss-Lady. When the drow pressed the light into the cambion's forehead, Binne tensed once and grimaced, but nonetheless stopped convulsing. After that, it was easy to shove the potion down her throat, and the bard found himself letting out a tired sigh of relief as Binne's breathing eased, and the bleeding in her side ceased under the General's hand.

"The mirrored shard," Solaufein's raspy voice was the first to break the silence.

Valen nodded, though his bloody hand was still pressed firmly to the now-healing wound, and Boss-Lady breathed evenly. He nodded to the elf's body, which Solaufein stood up to go ransack. He confirmed his find with a satisfied, "Xa," and held up the offending shard in the dim light. Without explanation, Solaufein started to drag the corpse of the Talontar toward the central altar, and dropped it in front of it with a satisfied grunt. The drow turned his attention to the next body he saw, and then turned his head only once to regard the General. "Take her outside, will you?" It came out as more of a suggestion than request, but Valen acquiesced immediately and picked up the large girl with little effort. Judging from the tiefling's expression, he was as eager as the rest of them to be rid of the smelly temple once and for all.

"What Boss be doing? And why . . . be doing it at all?" Deekin had to ask.

Solaufein dropped the next body, which appeared to be a former avariel, with a twitch of his nose. "A task I will not leave to another,'" he said this like it was an explanation (which it wasn't, but Deekin wasn't going to correct the Boss). Deekin left the odd drow to his own devices, knowing he had plenty of story-notes to catch up on.

Being an author was tiring, thankless work - he'd had to train himself to be ambidextrous for when his hands cramped up, his claws had become permanently ink-stained; the trade-off was that he didn't have to babysit a large and hungry white dragon all the time anymore. He'd discovered in his travels that it was very rare that anyone in the world - let alone a small kobold - was able to discover their true calling. One day, he hoped to retire from the hero-ing nonsense and stick to fiction. He couldn't imagine Boss in any other profession, though, or Boss-Lady - he made a note to himself that the further into the Underdark they seemed to go, the more comfortable he seemed to be. Solaufein and the Anauroch had not mixed well together, drawing a stern and short temper out of him even on nice and clouded days, when the sun didn't glare into his eyes as much. Here in the deep, however, he had begun to open up in spite of their very doomed circumstance.

"You're a bit tense, General," Boss-Lady remarked over Deekin's head to the tiefling. She'd woken up a little disoriented but in much better shape than a few minutes ago. Engrossed in his work and thoughts, Deekin could only spare a glance at Valen whose posture seemed to indicate that he was either angry or that something very large and long had been shoved up his backside. His tail thrashed from side to side hitting the back of his leg, and the noise was terribly distracting.

"I'm confused," the General admitted after a few quiet seconds of thought, apparently settling on blunt admission. "I don't understand why you chose to go through with this reckless mess. He had the antidote on him the whole time - we could've just knocked him unconscious and taken it."

A 'reckless mess' was a kind way to put it, Deekin thought, but 'outright miracle' was probably more accurate. Why the priest had happened to keep the antidote on his person was a question for the ages; Deekin was considering spelling it as a divine intervention in the novel, as a kind of nod from Lady Luck. "Oh," Binne was saying, "I guess I'm not sure. I felt as though the mirror was at fault and not him - the Talontar - that, or knowing our luck it was Halaster's fault entirely." Deekin stared up at the ceiling as she uttered this name and hoped - even prayed to any god that was listening - that Halaster didn't somehow know they were talking about him. "And I suppose I felt a little sorry for them all when I thought of it that way," the warlock went on in a saddened tone. "I thought, if this elf's such a nasty arsehole now, surely he was a dacent fella before this curse. Probably not even his fault he poisoned me. Who knows if the antidote would've worked while the doppelganger was still alive? What if it really was Talona that made the curse, not him? And then I thought about - what if this had happened to the Seer and her people? If they were the ones that were cursed - can't have that. But it can't be helped - Solaufein was right. I'm lucky at all to be alive . . . and there's no coming back from something like this for him. It leaves an awful taste in my mouth to admit it, but maybe not for any of them."

The General's response was terse, but surprisingly diplomatic. "He had the antidote on his person all along," the red head explained with strained patience. "We could've easily knocked him out and taken it rather than let you face his game and nearly die. Or we could've put him out of his misery - again, _before _you got stabbed and bled all over your armor again."

Binne's leather and adamantine links creaked as she examined herself, and Deekin cursed them for distracting them from his project, and started taking notes about them instead. "Aye," she admitted glumly. "I reasoned it'd be easier to follow through just as he promised to give us the shard in exchange. Felt like a fair deal, though that was probably the impending death talking. Gods are cheap, I thought. I didn't know it would get that bad that fast . . . And I only failed because I ran away."

"Doppelgangers are fearsome enemies," the General explained with miraculously more patience than before. "Whatever that elf infected you with made you hallucinate, and there's no shame in that. You fought well up until that point and defeated every enemy efficiently and quickly. Not many I have met could've have fought as well as you under the same conditions, let alone successfully conjure hellfire without lighting themselves on fire first. I've seen it get the better of many enemy warlocks in the heat of battle."

"Why are you trying to comfort me?" She demanded, sounding mystified.

Valen didn't sound sure of his own answer: "I didn't expect to hear you say you felt sorry for him. I don't. He tried to kill you. You were _dying_." Deekin wondered, again, how he was going to expand that final fight into a few more pages of dramatizations, and settled on an illustrative and very quick sketch of Solaufein battling the doppelganger as it was shaped like the Seer. It was better than remembering the other bits of the battle - such as Boss-Lady dying pretty horribly at his feet again.

"Boss-Lady be dying all the time," Deekin contributed to the discussion. "It not even be two weeks since she die the last time."

"Not all the time," Binne quickly defended herself, and quickly changed the subject. "General, did you catch the mirror-madness? I wish you'd go back to glaring at me - that was easier to handle."

Valen went back to square one, as he always seemed to when talking to Boss-Lady - confusion. "You want to be glared at?"

She snorted. "No, but I don't deserve to be comforted and I don't ever want your pity. I'm a little low on blood, but I'm fine. I could've fought the bugger and won, but I ran. I let my brain do the talking and—I thought it was my brother I was facing, really that it. That it was him, but he's long since dead. I was addled, and I don't need a pat on the back for it."

The tiefling went back to glaring, but it didn't have any fire in it; his eyes only seemed to turn red in the heat of battle, or anger. "You confuse me almost as much as Deekin does."

Deekin thought about objecting to this, but considered it to be a compliment because the General hadn't used the term 'kobold' and instead had used Deekin's name again. He let it slide, just the one time. Binne laughed brightly, like she hadn't almost died.

Solaufein re-emerged as a plume of smoke poured out of the temple, and slammed the doors shut behind them. Deekin barely had time to process what had just happened before it was time to pack up, move on, and try to find the next shard. "Ouf, the smell!" Binne whined, waving a hand in front of her nose. "Now you reek of a burning Zhent! What have you done?"

"Something better than leaving them to rot at the expense of another," the drow grumbled. He turned a critical red eye on her. "You are one to talk, you are covered in your own blood - again. Even Enserric thought it was a bad plan."

"I got to kill a doppelganger," the sword in question chimed in, "which was the equivalent of dessert wine for vampiric swords, so it evened out for me in the end."

"It couldn't have ended another way," Binne conceded with an indelicate shrug, "but we really ought to find a place to clean up soon."

"There's always the poison river, if he gets too rank," the General suggested in a surprisingly light tone, drawing a chuckle out of her and a faint grumble out of Solaufein. The incident was behind them, just like that.

Deekin bundled up his materials in his bag of holding once more, and they were off. He hung back with the warlock and tried to find ways to make the shards fit together, with the understanding that they were both to keep their distance in future battles; she would not recover from her blood loss until a few days without a potion of regeneration, which they did not have. They walked back to the avariel town led by Solaufein and avoided the townsfolk as they explored the farther reaches of the cavern.

They stopped as Solaufein motioned to halt; he'd been instructing them in quiet moments since Undermountain basic drow silent signals, and seemed to have detected battle up ahead. They followed slowly, keeping low and to the cavern wall. Deekin's toes could feel the vibration of the spells in the next cavern before he heard or saw what was going on. Slowly the cavern came to an hill with a narrow opening at the top, seamlessly blending with avariel columns of marble and gold carved to look like wooden branches. It made Deekin quite a bit sad to see; he hoped one day to see an elven city in its prime.

Near the heart of the island and situated at its highest point, where a once-bright castle might have been and was now a dilapidated corpse. As if to complete the visual transformation of the no doubt once brilliant, golden, cloud-touched spires into dingy, rotten columns, a battle between drow and driders took place within its ruins. Something seemed to have blasted one of the halls open to the air, and the screeching dark shapes collided into globes of shadow as drow wizards, warriors, and bowman fought for their lives.

"They will not hear us over the battle, but try to whisper," Solaufein whispered from in front of Deekin. "Except you, a'temra - you be silent."

"I can't see anything over Deekin's rump here," Binne grumbled quietly. "What's happening?"

Valen crept up beside Solaufein, unsurprisingly silent in his drow-made mithril plate. "Driders," he reported grimly. "You're not missing much, it's a slaughter."

"They wear the imposter's colors," Solaufein observed. Deekin slowly crept up to get a closer look. "We might tip the odds in the driders' favor," the drow continued to muse morbidly, "or at least pick off the wizards . . ."

"What is it with you and wizards?" Binne wondered aloud, earning herself a shush for raising her voice slightly.

"I remind you that Nathyrra is a one," Solaufein pointed out. "Dhaerow wizards are the most dangerous of us all. We could easily catch them unawares from here."

"I don't see any point in getting involved in a fight if we don't have to," the General spoke practically, with a note of tension. Deekin could understand why; it was an engrossing sight, like watching two shadowy, spidery hordes of mist and battle collide over one another through the ruins of the elven palace. There was no way they'd all survive being caught in the middle of that trap.

Solaufein stared at the battle longingly, the way he had when he'd seen Enserric in the skeleton king's lap. He seemed to turn to look at it in a moment of silent contemplation. After a moment, he sighed. "No, Enserric. Do not pout. We will return."

"We will?" Boss-Lady's voice rose in bewildered annoyance, and she was hushed once more.

They doubled back through the caverns through twisting and winding ways that Deekin had no hope of keeping track of. He made a mental note to make a map next time; it wouldn't do if they all relied on Boss only for Boss to get lost. If it had happened before, experience taught Deekin it would happen again, and they'd been well and truly lost in Undermountain without Deekin's makeshift map that at least pointed them back to the entrance.

It wasn't long before they were back near the avariel city. The temple was well and truly on fire at that point, and some of the smoke had made it to the town; true to form, the cursed avariel were ignoring the smelly pyre and going about their usual routines of milling about and doing nothing. Although, there was an improvement - one was at least bathing himself in the middle of the street.

"This is getting us nowhere," Valen complained in a valid way that no one could really argue with.

"I know," Solaufein demurred. His head turned from side to side as he sought something out. "Yet there are unexplored parts. I saw a tower . . . There." Where he pointed, Deekin could make out the faint outline of some kind of pointy shadow against a darker shadow, proving once and for all the superiority of infravision to darkvision.

"I don't see anything," Binne complained, "but anything at all is probably better than a horde of driders."

"I have a good feeling about it," Solaufein assured her.

This had the opposite effect on her. "Now you've doomed us all, you fate-tempting bastard!"

The shadow that only Solaufein had been able to make out clearly turned out to be a stark, tall tower of blue stone that couldn't have been more out of place if it tried to be. It was the only building so far that hadn't been in complete disrepair, infested with driders, and (or) on fire. Sitting some distance outside of it in the faint light of a cantrip's glowing orb over his head was an avariel by himself, picking dirt out from between his toes meticulously. His wings - still a radiant white - were molting fresh feathers on the ground as they seemed to move restlessly.

Boss approached first, and toed the focused avariel with his boot gently when the elf didn't react visibly to his presence. Owlishly, the avariel squinted up at the drow. "Oh, er, hullo," he greeted somewhat awkwardly in the same stilted Common as all the others. "Can I help you?" The elf asked, irritated.

Boss glanced back to Deekin and the others, and then back to the avariel and gestured as if to say, 'only with everything.' "What are you doing?" Solaufein wanted to know.

"Picking out the dirt from under my toenails, thought that was rather obvious," the elf explained dryly. It was a lucid and sarcastic remark that startled Deekin, expecting more nonsense or insane gibberish. The elf's nose twitched. "What smells like spell components?"

"There's a trash fire in town," Boss-Lady offered and stepped up with a smile, followed by Deekin and Valen - though the tiefling maintained a wary stance. "He means what are you doing in front of this tower," she clarified.

The winged elf brushed some bits of dark hair out of his face and turned his nearly translucently pale face back to the tower, as if he had forgotten its existence. A series of conflicting emotions passed over his face before settling on apathy. "Oh. I'd rather not go inside. I've put that all behind me, and decided to live simply out here. Really, it's not so bad."

"Just driders, poison rivers, and trash fires to contend with," Binne helpfully recounted. "And mirror shards, lets not forget those. Have you seen any?"

The elf seemed think about this, even as he turned back to gazing at his dirty toes longingly. "The Queen used to have a mirror, but I don't know about any shards," the elf revealed. "Mirrors are vain. Bad luck. Maybe my apprentice would know - you should go bother him in the tower. And leave me alone. Forever."

"I want nothing more than to leave you alone forever," Boss assured him. "You used to live in the tower?" He guessed.

The elf nodded, and leaned back on his elbows languidly to stare up at the starless, black ceiling. "I used to own that tower, when I was an arch-wizard. Now my apprentice runs it. I can't be bothered with any of that nonsense now - I've got plenty of mushrooms to eat, and lots of space to lay around, and all sorts of voices in my head to keep me entertained!"

"And that's how that conversation ended," Binne chirped, as they all simultaneously decided that this avariel would be as - if not even less - helpful than all of the other ones. They left him back to his toe-picking and approached the tower's main doors, the only part of it that looked scorched and damaged.

"What are the odds there is a mirror shard in here?" Boss asked no one in particular aloud.

They thought about it. Valen answered, "Has to be. It's a wizard tower."

"What are the odds one of us might die trying to get it?" Binne wondered with a little waver in her voice, even though she laughed - a lot had happened in one day for her, so Deekin could empathize. Boss didn't have an answer for her and opened the scorched and carved oaken doors.

Like half of the other buildings they'd been to in the cursed island, the inside was dilapidated and littered with strange dead bodies. Spidery legs were curled in some corners were investigating driders had been slain, alongside the plumed and bloodied feathers of great vrocks. Drow of the Valsharess' colors lay alongside mottled, reptilian slaadi and pale succubi - and what looked like piles of fallen jellies lay strewn about. It was worse than a catastrophe - it was some kind of wholesale slaughter.

"Augh!" Solaufein's deep guffaw of disgust summed up everyone's feelings about the scene pretty well.

"This is the _worst_ island!" Binne cried despairingly at the ceiling. She plugged her nose with her gloved fingers and scowled. "Why is everything filled with rotting corpses?!"

Deekin's nose had been trained for such nonsense, living with Tymofarrar, but even he had to admit it was getting over the top. "Deekin not seeing any avariel bodies," he noted thoughtfully. "Some bad drow, but this mostly look like demons an—"

A flash of light split through the air like lightning and struck the ground near one of the slaadi corpses, causing it to glow and swell. Everyone shrunk back instinctively from it, but it faded in an instant and with a loud 'pop.' In the place of the slaadi was a small red-plumed fat bird, very much alive and pecking at the ground absently.

"Is that a fucking chicken?" Boss-Lady spoke through her plugged nose, stuttering it out in disbelief.

It squawked and clucked, puttering its legs back and forth in place, looking very confused about its predicament. Deekin's mouth watered when he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd had good chicken. It flapped its wings a few times, but couldn't seem to lift off the ground. Almost grumpily, Binne approached the bird and nonchalantly picked it up in a practiced move under one arm, keeping it calm and immobile. The General let out a startled laugh, as if he were surprised to hear it come out of his own mouth.

"Uh, what just happen?" Deekin asked of the room and silently counted the number of ways he could cook the chicken (it'd been a while since they'd had any good meat).

Chicken in one arm, nose clenched with the other, Binne nasally explained: "had to be wild magic. I've seen it bef—"

A flash of lightning struck a drow body in the corner room, causing it to explode in a burst of bloody gore. The chicken squawked, blissfully ignorant of what had just happened having its back turned, but the noise clearly startled it. Everyone had managed to duck out of the way, but Solaufein was left picking pieces out of his hair with a frown.

"Wild magic," Binne reassured with wide eyes, observing Valen slough off a piece of gray matter from his pauldron. "Deekin and I are useless in there - anything we cast would be too unpredictable. An invisibility spell might as well turn us into dinner."

"We can investigate it," the General offered and looked to Boss, who nodded, still delicately picking pieces of out of his hair with a frown. "And hopefully not explode in the process. You two talk to the wizard, see if you can get anything else out of him."

"Yeah, I'll stay here and guard the chicken," she offered generously. "It probably won't affect you too much if you move fast enough. Just run past any of its effects or summons', and get out as quick as you can. You have speedy boots and Valen's the fastest man in armor I've ever seen. It's entirely random, so the odds of something exploding twice are quite rare." Deekin half-expected another corpse to explode to punctuate the end of her sentence - or at least the chicken - but all it did was gently cluck.

"Ssin'urne," Solaufein grumbled and pushed some fallen, grimy hair out of his eyes. "Now coated in iblith and worse, I can die in peace five minutes from now when wild magic explodes our livers."

Binne's eyes sparkled in recognition. "Save the sarcasm for trip back. I said it probably won't explode you if you're fast. Best hurry now!"

The warlock, the chicken, and the kobold parted ways with the warriors who ventured with twitching noses into the stinky tower, and approached the ex-wizard. Binne was finally able to breathe through her nose again, to her relief. "Whoo! Glad we're not in there." She looked down to the bird under her arm and jostled it, making it cluck a little in protest. "I wonder how long the polymorph lasts . . ."

"We should plucks him and eats him before," Deekin suggested eagerly.

She seemed shocked by the suggestion. "But I've already named him Miffy! I cannae eat him now. Besides, what if he turned back into a dead slaadi halfway through eating him, while still in our stomachs? We might get sick. No, we'll just keep him for now until something changes. If he's still a chicken by the time we put this mirror back together, I'll figure it out then."

Deekin sighed forlornly, but contented himself with the knowledge that she couldn't watch the chicken the entire time, and would have to put him down eventually. "Should we talks with the wizard?" The bard and warlock turned as one to stare at the avariel still intently picking out the dirt between his toes. "Nevermind," Deekin answered himself, "Deekin not wants the headache."

"There's more cavern up there to explore," Binne offered uncertainly, staring in the dark past the tower with squinted eyes, "though we should probably go slow, and run back if there's any combat. I don't want to take any chances with my life after that mess in the temple."

Still being able vividly recall the multiple instances where she had been nearly bleeding out at Deekin's feet, the kobold had to wonder if maybe she wasn't just cursed. She ran back to put the red-feathered, blue-plumed chicken next to the oblivious avariel wizard, figuring that the worst that could happen would be ending of the polymorph. Deekin did his best to do a quiet spell of invisibility but it still required chanting and felt less effective without the cymbals. They kept quiet but still made noise as they crept along further into the cavern, and while it wasn't the stealthiest operation, Deekin was a little proud of Boss-Lady for not saying anything the entire time.

Mid-step, she grabbed the back of his jerkin, which jangled against the metal of her gauntlets. "I smell water ahead," she whispered. Deekin took a few experimental sniffs in the air and noted the heaviness. His hearing wasn't the best, but there was something faint - a low rumble he'd only just now paid attention to. They kept low and stayed quiet, although the invisibility did wear off after a while and they clung to the edge of the wall for bearing so they might be able to find their way back. The rumble grew louder the further along into the pitch darkness they went, but Deekin wasn't sure if it was wise to hit a light.

Soon, the rumble became a rush, and Binne abandoned all notions of stealth. "I hear it! It's running water! Come on, Deekin!" She crowed and stood up, and started to run off into the dark. Deekin slapped a hand to his forehead and sighed, absently wondering how many charges the resurrection rod had and if the Seer had any spare ones lying around.

Though he couldn't see Boss-Lady in the dark, he followed the sound of the water until a dim, pale blue light started to give way to a closing cavern roof over what appeared to be a smaller, phosphorescent cave. The inside was wide and large and out of the walls, running water had carved a path through in a natural stream. Binne was next to it, sniffing the water she had cupped in her hand with interest. There didn't seem to be any enemies nearby, and the glow of the mushrooms gave the grotto a peaceful feeling that hadn't been present in any other part of the cursed island.

It immediately set all of Deekin's instincts on alert. If he had hackles, they'd be raised. "That be poison water from the Dark River?" Deekin asked, just now remembering how dirty and thirsty he felt.

She sipped gently at the water in her hand. "If I start convulsing, I'll let you know by screaming. In the meantime, I'm washing the demon gore out of my hair and hands."

Deekin wasn't so sure that was a good idea. "What if there be cave monster in here guarding precious water? Goat-lady not always think these things through," he grumbled, and readied his crossbow.

As if waiting for her cue, an imperious high voice cut into their peaceful banter. "How dare you put your grubby hands in my river!" The voice shrieked. Deekin's crossbow aim worked faster than his brain did most of the time, so he was staring down a very affronted and surprisingly clean avariel woman from bolt-point before he knew what he was doing. She was taller than the others, and there was something elegant in her features that the other lackadaisical avariel lacked; was it lucidity, though, or madness that shined through her eyes? "Well this is a fine turn!" The woman snarled. Definitely madness, he decided. "I'm being robbed of my water by a couple of raggedy vagabonds! I suppose that's what I get for abolishing the guard force," the woman continued in strident tones. "Robbers coming in and out of my cave, pointing crossbows at my face - ugh! It never ends!"

Binne had paused only momentarily in her pseudo-bath and refreshment to regard the woman with a blunted glare. "Raggedy vagabonds?" She examined herself, and Deekin, and the nodded at her own assessment. "Sounds about right."

Deekin squinted at the angry avariel woman in the cave. A quick glance around confirmed that this elf had been living in that cave near the water - plentiful mushrooms and a water supply that she could hoard meant she likely lived better than anyone else in the city. Her clothes had once been white and bits of shining plates and jewels still adorned her chest and belt. Her hair fell in limp and clumped strands, but there were hints beneath the grime that like her clothing, her locks had once been regal and golden. Like the palace, something shined beneath the curse that couldn't be dimmed, only concealed by willful neglect. This was no ordinary avariel, and Deekin ventured a guess. "You be elf queen, from the palace?"

She didn't like this question - at all - and expressed her rage by screaming at the ceiling in what Deekin felt like was an unnecessary amount of rage. "IT NEVER ENDS!" She screamed. "Queen Shaori this, queen that! Can't you people just bugger off and leave me alone?! Why else do you think I've been living in this bloody cave! I refuse to be Queen of anything!"

Deekin lowered his crossbow and placed it back where it belonged on his back. Binne started to ring water out of her hair, and splashed some on her face. "Oh, I like this queen," she laughed, and splashed some water from the river over at the cursed Queen Shaori. "I'd vote for 'er. Scram, you haggin' nag! We're taking your water, and then we'll be on our way. You've plenty enough to share, and you're in no position to argue."

Queen Shaori's steely blue eyes bored into the cambion's back, but her rage was ineffectual. Deekin had no doubt that she could have tried to kick them out of her cave, but something in her gave in and caused her to slump in defeat. She threw up her gold-ringed hands and strolled further back into her hermitage and sat down on a dirty mat, and began muttering to herself.

It was either curiosity or pity that moved him to the cursed queen. There was something terrible that drew him to its story - all the avariel that had been cursed, all that had died unknowing in their madness, and for what? And why? He had to know, and here was their leader - the one person who should have been able to help them, and she was hiding in a cave styling herself as a hermit.

"What do you want?" Shaori grumbled as Deekin approached, his little claws tapping on the ground.

Deekin sat down next to her, enduring the avariel's heartfelt scowl. "Deekin just wondering how all winged elves end up down here. It not be the best place for elves to live, unless they be dark elves," he reasoned mildly in spite of her tone.

Queen Shaori's eyes fell away from Deekin's and narrowed in conflict as she stared down at the ground. There was confusion in her features, as well as a deep kind of sadness that disappeared as quickly as it arrived. "It doesn't matter now," she snapped and went back to glaring at him. "There's no point in wondering about what might be or what was."

"Not very royal of you," he criticized. "That almost sounds guilty. Deekin now thinking maybe you knows something other avariels not know."

"What do you know!" Queen Shaori snapped. Her wings fluttered behind her restlessly, spreading a few grimy feathers to the ground. "You're just a filthy kobold!"

"And the smartest person I know," Binne piped up from behind Deekin, backing him up. The bard grinned toothily at the praise while Shaori scowled even harder. Binne looked to Deekin with a sly grin. "How much would you like to bet queeny has a shard or two under her skirt?"

"Ugh!" Shaori scoffed in a very queenly way. "Wanting my skirts, my jewels, my mirrors - you sound just like those wretched drow who came here. Shard this, curse that, prowling around my city looking for valuables - robbers, all of you!" The avariel snarled and stood, coming up to only Binne's shoulder in height. She blinked up at the cambion as another peculiar mixture of emotions swirled through her countenance. Ultimately, Shaori's wings drooped and she stalked away, appearing confused. "I gave them what they wanted," the cursed elf wailed to no one, "I gave the one in red the only shard I had. I don't have any more things to give. Do you want my rings? Is that it? Take them!" She pulled off one of the ones on her left hand and tossed it in the general direction of the wall where it clinked gently on the ground, undercutting her temper. "Take it all, and a pox be on you! I have nothing! I want nothing! Go root around my old palace if you want valuables! I can't be bothered."

The bard and warlock watched the queen rant to herself before turning to one another in regard. "We kills that red-armored lady, yes?" Deekin confirmed, searching his memory.

"Mm-hm. Valen ripped her arm clean off," Binne recalled with a fond expression. "Remember?"

Deekin did, and if his nose could wrinkle, it would. "Oh yeah. Deekin wishes he didn't remembers that."

Binne's pupils dilated. "It was horrible and beautiful," she crooned. "Unless there's another priestess in red running around, that's at least one more shard we have accounted for. Surely this means we're nearing the end of this awful vacation!"

"I thinks Queen Shaori knows more than she is sayings," Deekin revealed. "But she not be wantings to talk to us. Maybe we go, gets Boss, and see if he and Enserric can get more?"

Binne shrugged and brushed her wait her behind her ears. "Fine by me. But wash your feet at least before we go," she instructed in a motherly tone. Deekin stared down at his scaled toes and wriggled them, and decided it would be nice to be clean for a little while, even if they would just get dirty later. "And then let's kick Solaufein into that creek when he gets here, he needs it more than anyone alive."

Strolling alongside Boss-Lady in the gloomy dark back to the Tower with clean feet, Deekin felt oddly comfortable. They were less concerned with bumping into constant predators on the way back, and were able to trace their steps in the dirt back to the Tower and the still-toe-picking wizard. The red-plumed polymorphed chicken had decided to roost on the avariel's head. While they spared this sight a cursory glance, Deekin's ears alerted him to the metallic footsteps of the General and the Boss approaching from behind them.

Surprisingly, neither the tiefling or drow looked worse for wear after their venture. "Solaufein!" Binne greeted cheerily, and appeared as if she wanted to hug him - though she seemed to reconsider when she eyed the still-present gore all over his armor. "General," she greeted in a more subdued voice. "Find any shards?"

Solaufein's gaze, and tone, were equally sour. "Yes," was all he offered and produced a large sliver of the mirror that he'd been clutching in his hands.

"No blood shed this time," the tiefling reported with a rare amused expression. "I'm surprised too."

Boss-Lady's eyebrows crawled up her forehead toward her horns. "The apprentice just handed it over?"

"We didn't exactly give him a choice," Valen elaborated. "He was naked on top of a succubus, and we're heavily armed."

"Another well-executed flail-point negotiation! Your diplomacy skills are legendary, General Shadowbreath," the warlock complimented delicately and took the mirror piece out of Solaufein's extended hand. She examined her reflection in the mirror for a moment before giving it to Deekin, who started pulling the other pieces out to examine them and see how they might fit. He had a possible arrangement in mind, but without the frame of the mirror, there was no way to be certain they had collected all the pieces left. "Master bard, do you think we're close?" She asked of him.

Deekin hummed. "Mmmmaybe? Deekin thinking queen lady might be sayings more, if we show her the pieces."

Binne clapped in excitement. "That's right! We did some exploring while you were off threatening to smash the wizard's dangly bits. You'll want to see this."

Deekin had never seen his Boss so excited to see something before - a genuine smile of joy crossed the drow's face when he spotted the mineral creek and he didn't even spare a word in Common before running right to it and dunking his head in. Queen Shaori was even less pleased at this intrusion than before, if that was even possible. They all took a moment to clean up and refresh themselves while the fallen queen sulked in a corner about more raggedy vagabonds stealing her water. She shouted quite a bit at Solaufein before he retaliated childishly by splashing water at her, calling her "elg'caress" in a move that almost mirrored Binne's a little earlier. As before, Shaori huffed away and sulked in her corner.

The Queen wasn't keen on talking to any of them, even less so than she was before. Her answers were clipped and her manner impossibly more brusque. "Show her the pieces," Boss instructed to Deekin. The bard carefully pulled out the individual pieces from his pack and started assembling the on the ground before Shaori, though the avariel was sitting faced away and staring stubbornly at the wall, refusing to regard any of the 'interlopers' that invaded her precious cave.

"Queen Shaori maybe want to look at this?" The kobold offered, not really expecting much.

She looked at him over her shoulder with the queen of all glares, and slowly turned back around with a heavy sigh. "If I do, will you all promise to go away and leave me alone forever?"

Deekin looked up to his Boss for confirmation. Solaufein nodded. "We promises to leave you alone if you look at mirror and tells us what you know," Deekin agreed reasonably.

The avariel queen turned about and stared down at the shards he'd assembled into a workable shape in the dirt. Her expression became shuttered, and her lips thinned. "Is that what I . . .?" She trailed off in her mutterings and seemed startled by her own reflection in the mirror. Abruptly, her expression became angry and withdrawn and she clenched a pile of dirt in her hands, tossing it over the shards and sending them into disarray. Deekin clucked and started collecting them, brushing off all the dirt.

"I hate it!" She shrieked. "I hate that mirror! Get it away! It's caused me nothing but misery! Talk to that bloody Fool in the throne room, he loves nothing more than prattling on about that horrid thing - but I'll not look at it anymore! Now get out, _get out, GET OUT!_" The Queen literally shrieked them all the way out of her cave, apparently having expended her last civil nerve fulfilling Deekin's small request.

"I'd still take her over the Valsharess," Binne chirped as they strolled out. "In a queenly competition."

The kobold frowned. "Deekin not so sure she be any better then bad drow lady. Deekin thinking maybe Queen Shaori be one who broke mirror in first place, and that why she not be happy looking at it."

Solaufein's eyes sought out his. "What makes you certain?"

Deekin shrugged. "Deekin not certain, but she be only avariel so far that recognizes it as mirror. And she not say whether or not she recognize it, but it seem pretty obvious to Deekin." The three big people around him considered this, and the bard couldn't help but wonder how they hadn't put it together themselves. It had seemed fairly obvious to him.

"She spoke of a Fool in the throne room," Valen recalled. "The palace is the only place we haven't explored yet . . ."

Binne's tone fell from chirpy to flat. "And it's covered in driders and drow."

Boss snorted. "Do not look at me, I wanted to pick them off hours ago."

Boss-Lady was unapologetically opposed to this idea. "I'd rather not fight through a small army of driders just to see if the queen's court jester is still alive and happens to have another shard on him. I almost died recently, and I'd rather not almost die again so soon."

"That was because you fought alone," Boss pointed out. "This curse causes queens to reject their thrones, merchants to reject wealth, and librarians to burn books. Perhaps it has turned this Fool into a sage."

The cambion sighed. "Fine. Off to certain doom we go."

Deekin pulled out his lute from his bag of holding with a toothy grin. "Deekin will sing the Doom song then, because we be so Doomed!"

The drow and cambion sighed while the General's brows knitted together in confusion. "Doom song?" He asked.

Deekin was about to launch into an explanation when he was cut off by Solaufein. "You will regret asking him."

"Ignorance is bliss," Binne agreed firmly.

"Doomy doom doom, DOOM doom! Doomy doom . . ." Deekin chanted and strummed arrhythmically; the doom song wasn't really about the beat, or the tune, but the transcendent feeling of hilarity that is induced when once accepts one's inevitable doom. This subtlety was often lost on big people, so Deekin forgave them their ignorance since that wasn't a crime. The doom song was just too real for some people. It was definitely too much for the General, who demanded Deekin stop upon pain of being fed to the driders.

The dilapidated, dank, and desolate palace had calmed down considerably since they had last slunk past it. It looked no more better or worse for wear, but was engulfed in an impenetrable silence. The battle had clearly ended, but which side had won wasn't entirely clear in the dark. They watched the place for movement from afar before Solaufein declared it safe, and he led them down an incline to the broken palace' walls.

Through a hole that had been made by who knew what, they stumbled across the remains of some kind of sitting room that was - like all the other places on the cursed island - littered with the deceased. "These are fresh," Solaufein commented as his eyes gleamed in the spectrum of heat. "Most are still warm."

"But who won?" the General wondered.

His question was answered as Solaufein looked up to the ceiling of the voluminous cavern and cursed loudly. "Pholor'udoss!" He pointed and Deekin looked up, and wished he hadn't. Darkvision was great until it gave you a better look at your impending spidery doom. Then, it was only a burden. "Into the palace, now!" He commanded, and there was a scramble to get over the remains of the fallen drow and massive spider limbs to the inner walls.

If the avariel palace had once been inhabited by people, there was little trace of it. However long it had been dwelling in the Underdark was enough time for an entire nest of driders to take root and cover every inch of it with webbing.

Binne didn't ask or warn anyone before conjuring up the same fire from before and flinging it like a whip at the webbing ahead of them that blocked the way into the palace halls - it was stinky and cloying, but nonetheless burnt a quick and effective path through the webs, allowing them all to escape further into the palace away from the descending driders.

A combination between a screech and a keen set Deekin's little teeth on edge as he followed everyone into the mess of palace halls and webs, and his feet tickled beneath as they stuck to the remaining webbing. Some kind of skittering or clambering overhead and behind him alerted him to the impending doom by dridery death that surely awaited them further in.

Valen suddenly roared from behind, startling him further. Deekin didn't turn to look in time, but definitely heard the sickening squelch of flail meeting flesh, followed but a louder version of the keening screech from before. "There are too many!" The General shouted, and flung his flail again.

Boss doubled back just as Boss-Lady turned to scorch something over their heads that let out another nigh-deafening wail by Deekin's ear. He finally got a good look at a drider up close when he turned to face the one she'd lashed out at, and fired a bolt of ice he'd loaded earlier right into its face. It wasn't a sight he would forget for the rest of his life - legs as long as a sword spider's and black as night, with the torso and head of a malformed and bloated drow female snarling with a look of utmost pain and hatred. They were emitting the piercing cries of pain each time they were struck, unsettling his bones. He'd managed to get her in the face with the bolt, which spread like frost over a winter window over the rest of her face and body until she could only twitch in pain. One hit from Enserric to behead it, and the drider collapsed on the ground.

Deekin got a moment to glance at their doom - further into the palace they'd run into the tall hallways adorned with spires he'd seen from the outside, and every part of them seemed to be covered in driders and webbing. Faster than he could really process, they were skittering down the walls and halls to meet the invaders of their nest. Deekin ducked further behind Boss and the General and fired out bolts as randomly as he could, trying to think of any spells or songs he knew that wouldn't just make their situation even more cramped and doomed than it already was.

The foursome pressed into each other as the driders narrowed in. From behind the General he could see the driders seething in the dark - twitching, inching closer, but each time the did, Valen would glare or rattle his flail and they'd take a step back. As if the driders and they had reached an impasse.

"They are not attacking any more," Solaufein noted with some surprise. Deekin turned to look behind him and saw the same situation with their enemies facing down Enserric.

"Well, that's odd," Enserric chimed with a merry red glint in Solaufein's hands. "In this instance and this instance only, I recommend not killing them unless they try to kill us again. They taste bloody awful."

"Well, Valen, I'd say they won earlier," Boss-Lady determined. She was still standing in a battle-ready stance with a harrowing amount of hellfire licking her mailed fist. "Less wizards for us to kill, at least, eh?"

Deekin examined the ones that were closest a little further, and again wished he hadn't. He suspected these would be the fuel of many of his future nightmares. "Deekin not think that any court jester be alive long enough with these uglies around," he offered, since no one else was pitching any ideas.

They were pressed together tightly in an enclosing circle of drider death. Boss suddenly clanged Enserric against the ground, and slashed at one of the ones in front of him, who let out a hiss and skittered back, uninjured. Two standing beside it followed suit and he stepped forward. "Inbau rath," he hissed out, and clanged the sword again, swiping at them with Enserric and making more room for them to maneuver.

"They be afraid of us," Deekin realized.

"Well I'm plenty afraid of them," Binne replied in a wavery tone. She and the General inched backward, keeping an eye on their surrounding enemies carefully as they followed Solaufein's movements.

It was true, by some miracle - the driders were actually afraid of them. All Deekin had to do after that was point his crossbow at any that got too close, and they backed away with those malicious, infra-glares that glowed with heat. By some miraculous providence, they were not as doomed as Deekin had previously thought.

They managed to inch their way through the palace, pressing through in a tight circle past the nest of incoming driders, who continued surrounding them and skittering away from their movements. They seemed most afraid of the flail and Binne's fire, so they kept the flank while Solaufein and Deekin pressed through the dark corridors.

"Erm, Boss know where we be going?" Deekin asked, about halfway through.

"More or less," was all the drow could offer as he kept his attention and gaze fixed on their impassive enemies.

By trial and error, or again by miracle, they found themselves corralled to a closed door that alone stood intact and untouched by spider webs. Backed to this wall with nowhere else to go that didn't spell dridery death, Deekin let the three big people guard him while he examined the door for handles or locks, which it did not appear to have. It was huge and double-doored, made out of wood - something Deekin hadn't seen since they came to the Underdark. Feeling the pressure of the moment on him, Deekin decided it was best to just knock.

"Really?" Was all the General had to say in a particular tone of voice to make Deekin feel embarrassed. When the door swung open after Deekin's third knock on creaky hinges, all the General could say again in a more incredulous tone was, "_really?_"

"Really," Deekin repeated cheerily, and stepped inside the only part of the island untouched by the curse.

The avariel Queen's throne room. Alabaster columns limned with swirls of gold supported a looming ceiling of tiled and colorful stone depicting birds, flowers, and mountainous scenes that reminded Deekin of Hilltop. The floor was cut marble and clacked against his toe-claws as he stepped in, echoing into the larger chamber. It was lit with braziers that placed its full glory on display, alighting the numerous paintings and scrollwork lining the walls of the great hall. It was massive, at least as large as two of Lith My'athar's temples, and in no way did it belong in the Underdark where the sun could never shine.

As soon as the door had swung open and Deekin stepped in, Solaufein, Binne, and Valen quickly followed with relieved cries and ran in after, pressing the door shut behind them with as much force as all of them could muster combined. "Hopefully this fucking thing holds," Boss-Lady growled as she pressed her back into it.

Deekin walked into the room, unafraid, taking it all in. How had the curse avoided touching this place? What had been special about it? The answer was in there, he was sure. The thing that would make sense of all of it. Past the fluted columns and delicate art, sitting in the throne, was the answer. It was a lackluster figure clad in stripes of blue, green, and red. He was and decidedly unkingly with asymmetrical features and two differently-shaped wings, slouched into a natural hunch as he had draped himself across the throne, clutching a scepter in his hands. The Fool's eyes - a clear and lucid blue - were fixed on Deekin, who found himself unable to look away from the sorrowful figure. His gaze had a weight to it that made Deekin uncomfortable, and he wondered if the Fool had been given the ability to read minds. Still, it was the only good news they'd encountered so far on the cursed island; so far, everything had been exclusively bad news. "Boss!" Deekin called back with genuine hope in his voice. "It's the Fool! He's still alive!"

Solaufein caught up with him at a slow in pensive pace, taking in their surroundings. There were no driders, no drow, just them, the Fool, and the throne. "Well would you look at that," Binne chirped, coming up to a stop beside the drow with Valen not far behind.

The Fool descended from his throne in one quick movement, and put his scepter carefully on the ground as he dipped into an ungraceful bow. "Welcome," spoke the Fool. "I've been expecting you."

"Of course he has," the General scoffed quietly.

"You are the Fool?" Solaufein guessed, even though it was obvious. The jester stood from his bow and nodded, turning his unnaturally heavy gaze on the unperturbed drow. Deekin was a little grateful, since the attention was uncomfortable.

"Settle a bet for us, would you?" Binne threw in, catching up to the group from the door. "Did Halaster curse you?" The Fool opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it and seemed to consider his reply further. After a moment, he nodded. "Fuck!" She cursed at the ceiling in annoyance. "Oi, does the Blackcloak get around."

"I knew it," Solaufein hissed in a weirdly victorious tone as his eyes narrowed at nothing in hatred.

Deekin cleared his throat to get the Fool's attention. "Erm, how Blackcloak curse you, and how do we be fixing it?" He asked politely, since asking polite questions had gotten him pretty far lately. "Deekin figurings it have something to do with mirror shards, so we gathered all the ones we find."

The Fool smiled; it was a broken upturn of lips that had clearly forgotten how to do so. "I know. I watched you from the Throne, through my shard. Ever since you came to this island, I've watched your progress."

Binne's eyes narrowed. "You've 'watched' us? Did you watch us nearly get killed?"

The Fool sighed and climbed back up the steps to the raised throne, and sat down in it wearily. "Part of my curse was that I was granted all the wisdom I lacked in life. You have seen how it affects the other avariel. Queen Shaori was holding the mirror when it broke, and was most acutely affected. She rejected her rulership and devoted herself to an entirely selfish existence, opposite of what she was previously. So, I became my opposite. So long as I remained here, in the throne room, I could have all the wisdom in the universe - and the ability to change nothing without outside help. I watched through the mirror for someone who might be able to collect the shards. You could say I got lucky."

"You could say a lot of things about this situation," the General interjected, "but I wouldn't call any of it 'lucky.'"

"How did mirror break?" Deekin had to know. "Did Queen drop it?"

The Fool's smile came back when he turned to Deekin. "No. It is the Mirror of All-Seeing. She made the mistake of turning it on someone who could see her back. Shaori had heard the stories of Waterdeep, and used her mirror - she thought - to find the Blackcloak, to see to the heart of why he had grown silent. I do not know what happened next, except that the mirror had been broken and this curse was afflicted on us - to create in each of our people an opposing, reflected self. To be contrary. That is the curse. Why the Blackcloak inflicted it, or even if he was the one responsible for it is a mystery."

Solaufein nodded as if he had suspected this all along. "Always a wizard."

"I really hate Halaster now," Valen admitted bitterly. "Not only does he geas you, but he does this. What did they do to deserve this?"

"He also turned me into a sword," Enserric pointed out bitterly. "Not to sound like I'm complaining or anything."

Binne raised a had to pat Valen familiarly on the shoulder, but before the tiefling noticed it, she withdrew it as if stung. "Well, maybe the Queen caught him on the Mirror while he was in the loo and he got embarrassed. He's a renowned madman according to those who know him best. It's not as if people haven't tried to kill him for things just like this—it's just not worth the effort."

"As I said before, perfectly in character for the big goon," Enserric confirmed cheerily from Solaufein's side.

It didn't seem fair to Deekin, though he was hard pressed to think of a time in his life when anything 'fair' had ever happened to anyone. The least he could do, he figured, was fix the curse. "Would puttings the mirror back together undo curse and helps your people?" He asked of the Fool.

The Fool descended from his throne and pulled out of his hand a circular mirror, large enough to be held in two hands. It was the kind of mirror that wouldn't have been out of place mounted on a vanity, and seemed perfectly ordinary. In its empty frame was one small piece with a rounded edge. Wordlessly, Deekin took off his pack from his back and rummaged through his bag of holding for the mirror pieces. He'd wrapped them in some spare clothing to protect them from getting jostled or further broken, and passed the pieces to the Fool.

With the frame in hand, it was an easy enough fix - just like a small jigsaw puzzle. It seemed to Deekin that there had been some method to the curse in where it had placed the broken shards - scattered throughout the people of the avariel city, it would have been impossible for any one of the cursed citizens to gather enough wherewithal to put it together. Only the Fool had any sure knowledge of the curse, and he was forbidden from leaving the throne room. As much as it had hurt his heart to watch the elf-angels mill aimlessly about their lives in the market, it only really struck Deekin in that moment that the Fool was the saddest one of them all.

Before the last piece was about to be fitted into place, Deekin paused to speak to the Fool one last time. "Are you ready?" He wondered.

The Fool seemed hesitant, but smiled. "This isn't me," the little avariel decided. "I might wish it was, but it just isn't."

Deekin nodded and turned to his big people. "Everyone be ready?" He asked them.

"What'll happen to us and the driders?" Binne wondered, drawing the Fool's attention.

"The city will return to the surface," the Fool explained. "You will not return with it, but we will."

"What about the mirror?" Boss queried.

"I suspect it will remain behind," the Fool guessed, "but I cannot know."

Binne sighed. "Not much of a fix if it leaves us as drider-food."

"I think they were a part of the curse as well," Boss intuited with a little uncertain edge to his voice. "I have to wonder what became of the castle's tenders."

"You think the curse turned them into the driders?" Valen put that leap together before anyone else did.

Boss shrugged, and twirled Enserric in his hands. "If they are not, we can handle them."

"Sure, I'll just set them all on fire." Deekin wasn't always able to tell when Boss-Lady was being sarcastic, but this seemed like one of those times.

With all the positive affirmation needed and out of the way, Deekin clicked the final mirror piece into its place in the mirror, and everything changed.

It began with a light behind his reflection in the mirror, as the last little edge clinked into place, and soon the light erupted into a stream of white that blinded him to everything else. It wasn't painful, but it was disorienting. He hard the cries of Boss, goat-man, and Boss-Lady who were similarly affected, and in confusion he clung to the mirror and stumbled back into the others. There was some cursing a tripping involved, but he landed flat on his butt and covered the mirror with his body to protect it from any clumsiness. "Deekin sorry," he tried apologetically and squeezed his eyes shut to hopefully blink away all the whiteness.

It faded after but a moment into complete, blissful dark and silence. He heard weapons drawn and a flail's chain clink, but no sound of alarm. Slowly, he opened one eye and then another, to see what had happened.

Slowly he became aware of a dim light overhead in the form of the Queen's cave's glowing mushrooms, and the gentle sound of a babbling brook. No howling driders, no skittering limbs. He clenched the mirror against his chest to assure himself that it was real, too, and that it all hadn't been some wizard's trick or a strange dream.

"Be welcome," a familiar voice greeted, belonging to the once begruding Queen Shaori. Beside her was the Fool with an even more lackluster appearance than before, and his blank eyes and mindless smile seemed to finally reflect this. Deekin was confused until he turned around and realized the Queen was looking at _and_ speaking directly to him. She looked the same as before, but bore herself with a nobler air. Her spine was straighter, and her shoulders thrown back. She did not look as small, or squat, or petulant. She wore a gentle, if tearful smile and seemed to him to be an entirely different person with a familiar face. "I fear I've treated you all rather ungracefully," Queen Shaori admitted softly. "From the bottom of my heart, I apologize." She bowed formally and knelt to the ground before them all.

"Deekin never see a Queen bow before," he admitted uneasily. "Um, it is okays, Queen Shaori. Deekin not mind. You all be cursed, so it not really be your fault you actings so nasty before."

"I could do with a little more bowing and scraping," Binne felt the need to add. "She shouted at me earlier. It might have hurt my feelings!"

Queen Shaori stood to regard the cambion with a small smile. "It has been a long time since I've been able to identify humor. I think I've bowed enough, though."

Boss-Lady laughed good naturedly. "Good to see you have a spine after all."

"Where did everything go?" Deekin wondered. "Is flying elf city intact?"

Queen Shaori's luminous blue eyes became downcast. Her posture did not slump, but her previously noble air took on a decided burden. "It is back where it should be. My people will recover. They are strong. I will recover. I wanted to thank you, personally, for all that you have done. And on my jester's behalf." For the first time she turned to regard the Fool, and knelt down to the shorter elf's almost comical level. He preened at the attention she gave him, and stroked his hair as one would a child.

Deekin considered what to do or say in situation. "What happen to Fool? He go back to normal too?"

"For whatever normal is. He will be taken care of. It is all I can do," was all she could say on the matter. "Before you go, I have a request." This time, she knelt to Deekin's level and eyed the mirror clutched in his hands with a wary expression. "Keep it, take it somewhere far away from the Cloud Peaks," she pleaded. "Use it or dispose of it, as you will. Keep it in one piece, whatever you do. And absolutely _do not _attempt to use it to spy on any wizards, especially if they are known to be mentally unstable. That's all the advice I can give. May it do you all the good it never did me."

Shaori, now that she was in her right mind, turned out to be a mage of some power herself, and opened a portal back to her city. Before leaving, she turned back to Deekin and placed a gentle kiss on the kobold's forehead that startled him into letting out a reflexive 'eep'! She smiled at his fluster. "Thank you, hero," and with these parting words she took the Fool by hand and led him back to their homeland, most likely to never be seen by Deekin again.

And just like that, it was over. The cursed island was no more. They were all relieved for different reasons; Deekin, for doing his part and fixing the island, Binne for seeing that the chicken somehow didn't disappear with the city and was standing in the river, Solaufein for the river not disappearing as well, and Valen for it just finally being over so he could get a good nap in on the boat.

Boss availed himself liberally of the river again while Deekin debated what to do with the mirror that had been entrusted to him. Boss unexpectedly declared, "it is up to Deekin. He is the one who recovered it." So, Deekin - ever the diplomat - decided to put it up to a vote. All of them ended up unanimously voting that it should go the Seer when Valen suggested it. It made the most sense, and collectively they did not trust themselves (or Solaufein) not to use it to piss off Halaster again and accidentally curse Lith My'athar this time. (Although considering it turned avariel into their opposites, Deekin wasn't sure exactly what that would mean for an entire city of drow and was a little curious. Would they all turn into flying avariel?)

The island, as it turned out, had not changed in size since they ended the curse, but all of the avariel and refuse had disappeared, leaving it a strange and barren island of rocks and random mushrooms. The four heroes and their chicken were able to meander their way, even without the previous landmarks, to the dock where Cavallas' boat still sat waiting at the Poison River, mysteriously hovering still despite the choppy waves. "Creepy as ever," Binne summed up their feelings quite well about the boatman who stood still in the same position that they had left him in, on the boat's deck where he had given Deekin a parting wave. They all nodded and hummed in agreement. Even the chicken, tucked under arm, gave a cluck.

"Greetings, Wayfarer," Cavallas intoned as they approached, as usually only addressing Solaufein.

"Did you stand there this entire time?" Solaufein wanted to know, trying to peer up into Cavallas' blank hood. Whatever he saw made him frown, but that could have meant anything; Deekin had been quaking in his armor during the drider attack while all it did to Boss was make him mildly annoyed. "Did you move from this spot?"

Cavallas, disturbingly, gave no answer. "Let's just go," Binne grumbled and hobbled on board with Miffy the chicken. Deekin followed, eying the chicken hungrily, hoping Boss-Lady had brought it to eat and not to keep as some kind of demented pet.

The chicken was either psychic or suicidal, it wasn't clear - what was clear was that as soon as it stepped on board Cavallas' boat and got a solid look at the boatman with one bleary yellow eye, it let out a loud 'BUCK-AWWK' like the kind Deekin had made once when he was really scared and started flapping its silly, useless wings. It startled Boss-Lady so much that she let go of the chicken, who actually flew for a few moments in the air before dive-bombing forward into the Dark River and disappearing with a pained 'AAWWWK' into a pile of feathers and bloody fluff.

Binne stood still and watched the poisoned water where it had disappeared in speechless horror. Deekin's stomach rumbled while he watched where it had disappeared with a similar expression, for an entirely different reason. "Oh no!" was all she could say, and covered her mouth.

The laughter that erupted out of Solaufein's mouth was both infectious and awful. There was nothing really funny about the situation, but Deekin was starting to understand drow humor the more time he spent in the Underdark; it wasn't that it was funny, it was that it was horrible, and all you really do in the face of horrors was laugh uproariously at them. He took it a step further and pointed, doubling over in laughter until he was practically breathless, and even the General couldn't help the chuckles that started escaping from his mouth as a result.

"That's not funny!" Binne crowed, uncovering her mouth for a moment to regard the still-in-the-throes-of-laughter drow. Helplessly, a few chuckles emerged from her until she slapped her hand over her mouth again with wide eyes. After a few seconds of trying to contain herself, she couldn't hold it back any longer and they all ended up doubled over on the edge of hilarity right there on the deck.

It did die down after a few minutes, and after a final round of guffaws, there was a collective sigh. "Deekin wishes we had eatens Miffy before he do that," the bard lamented. "Oh well. At least we store food on boat before we leaves drow city."

"Maybe we should set up camp on the island, then," the General offered, ever the pragmatist. "Hardly enough room on the boat. I don't think Cavallas would mind."

Binne peered up at the boatman from her spot sitting on the deck. "Do you eat, boatman?" She asked. Cavallas stared down at her, and was unresponsive. "I don't think he likes me."

"He does not eat," was all Solaufein would confirm when they looked to him. He'd been the only one brave enough to get a good look inside of Cavallas' hood, and wasn't in the sharing mood to describe what he had found. Deekin figured that could work in the final edition anyway; the unknown was always more horrifying than the known, and what people didn't know about the boatman would be more interesting than what they did.

After the kind of day they'd had, it didn't take long for everyone to realize how tired they really all were. They'd left their camping supplies on the boat, not knowing how long they'd be on the island, and there was a small scramble to assemble everything fast enough so they could have soft mats to lay on and pass out. They agreed to take turns for watch, and Deekin volunteered first so he could catch up on his notes and finish a few sketches. He was touching up the sketch of the drider he had pierced with his ice bolt when it was time to wake up Boss-Lady for her shift three hours later, judging by candlemark. She stoked the fire quietly as Deekin nodded off, grateful and absently praying to Boss' moon lady that he didn't have any drider nightmares.

If he had any dreams at all, they were forgotten immediately upon awakening to the camp being torn down. He was still yawning by the time they get on Cavallas' boat, and was chewing on jerky, hoping the taste would help clear his head faster.

"I could use some mead," Boss-Lady bemoaned to the boards of the boat, laying cheek-down on them as Cavallas' silently directed the craft into the waters with an invisible push. The boatman's arm raised and they turned around, slowly veering off into the fathomless dark.

"I could use some morimatra," Solaufein bemoaned in sympathy with her. The drow sighed and sat down next to Deekin near the aft, who was wrapping the Mirror of All-Seeing into even more spare clothing he had found in the bag of holding for safekeeping. "Good work, Deekin," he complimented. "I should have said that before."

Deekin would have flushed if he had been warm-blooded. "It be no big deals, Boss."

Solaufein turned his glowing gaze to the dark. "It is a powerful tool. I would entrust no one else to keep it safe until we can get it to the Seer."

Deekin nodded and shoved it as gently as he could into his bag. "Ya-hum. Deekin keeps it nice and Safe for Seer."

Binne flipped over and turned to regard them both on her other side. The boat was small enough that no matter where they stood or lounged, it seemed they were in each other's space. "You're a right hero, Master Scalesinger!" She grinned. "A proper one called so by an elven queen and everything."

He accepted her compliment with dignity. "Deekin knows you is not making fun of him when you says that, so thank you."

The never-chipper General sighed from the stern. "I'm just relieved to be out of there. Are we returning to Lith My'athar?"

It suddenly occurred to Deekin that he had no idea where they were going either. "Soon," Solaufein explained, "Cavallas will take you there if you require it. Currently he is taking us to the Isle of the Maker, the golem isle you spoke of. You have a duty to the Seer's forces, and I will not keep you from that."

Valen gave the drow a considering look. "She decreed that I aid you and do my best to keep you safe," he decided after a moment of contemplative silence. "I'll not leave while there's work to be done."

Solaufein bowed his head in thanks. "Your presence has been invaluable. Cavallas has mentioned that duergar frequent this isle, so we might trade there. The mirror is an excellent find, but I would prefer to return to Malla Seer with something more substantial than a dangerous magical artifact. Such as golem allies, if any survive in this Maker's laboratory with an intact control rod."

"Failing that, I'm sure there's shinies to salvage for some dangerous folks like us," Binne rationalized, and blew at a piece of hair that had fallen out of her braid into her eyes. "Though a magic mirror that scries anything anywhere is quite nice. Basically negates the whole need for enemy intelligence."

"Unless it breaks again," Valen reminded with a dark expression.

"I suspect, like Halaster, the Valsharess and arch-devil might be immune to its power," Solaufein mused.

"Only one way to find out," Binne chirped.

Deekin wasn't so sure the big people were thinking this one through again. "Maybe we not be pressings our luck. We gots the magic mirror, and as usual lotsa people die. Maybe we all should be beings glad that it not be us dead this time. At least it not in bad drow lady's hands."

"You have a point, master Scalesinger," Valen conceded and Deekin was surprised to hear a title and actual name come out of his mouth. Could it be Valen had grown his polite glands? Or were those not a thing that big people had? Valen seemed to realize the oddity of the moment those words left his mouth just as Deekin did. "Huh, I think this is the first time I've agreed with something Deekin has said," the General admitted.

Binne grinned at him. "You get used to it after a while."

Valen's crimson brows knitted together. "That's exactly what Nathyrra said." Boss chuckled.

As Cavallas' strange boat meandered them through the Dark River's choppy waters toward a distant shore, Deekin had to admit to a feeling of nostalgia in the never-ending cavern. It felt like being right back at home, the more time Deekin spent in the Underdark. Though he didn't miss Old Boss, there was a warmth to the cavern that he had always missed since he left. He had often felt alone even surrounded by his fellow clan, but since joining Boss - despite the constant Doom - he didn't feel lonely whatsoever.

* * *

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

_Waela_…someone who is being an idiot and needs to know it_  
Ssin_…the verbal equivalent of the slow-clap  
_Inbau_…fuck off!  
_Elg'caress_…hag


	6. Diplomacy

BINNE

Beshaba must have smiled on me the hour I set foot on that forsaken golem isle. Shortly after waking from a much needed nap on Solaufein's comfortable leg and I was being tossed into walls like a child's toy. The bloodstained adamantine scales I was wearing for protection didn't help soften the blow none, but it did make a hell of a jangling that set my ears ringing for probably the next month. A clay golem had gotten a hold of me in its mitts and flung me about like I was a rug it needed to beat the dust out of. For not the first and probably not the last time, I cursed the fact that no one designed helmets with extremely horned girls in mind.

Amidst the chaos of the clay man fight ending, I managed to sit upright and immediately held my head in my hands and groaned. I couldn't hear or think or see straight because everything was spinning on different axes. "Boss-Lady now kinda look like Boss whens Hala—"

Solaufein cut off the kobold bard with a curt tone. "Deekin, _enough_. I am armed and I will end you."

"Yes Boss. Sorry Boss." It was a passionless admonishment met with an equally insincere apology. I doubted Deekin would ever let Solaufein live that one down.

Solaufein's face swam in my vision as a midnight blur, and my head felt wet when I touched it. Someone managed to shove a healing potion down my throat, which helped with the tilting and the swirling but not so much with concussion I definitely had and the ringing in my ears that was there to stay. "I need a bigger weapon," I immediately decided as I took Solaufein's kindly offered arm and stood up on less-wobbly feet.

"And training," the drow added - not snidely, just observantly. He was right, I'd not had any proper training aside from my father Drak Black-Raven whose Uthgardt philosophy toward personal violence was more poetic than useful. 'Hit 'em til they bleed out th' hayed, twice if'n thar be risn' dead!' Drak's sage advice on fighting automatons was most practical and floated through my mind: 'run if they're bigger than ye an' let the clerics sort th' lot!' I'd mostly coasted by through my nearly thirty years on a combination of luck and firepower, and during the war there wasn't exactly proper time for training what with all the death, drinking, and getting my arse shot full of arrows.

"I could certainly use that too," I agreed with no shame. I'd never had a problem accepting proper criticism when it was well-warranted. "I'll stick to spells until I find something big enough to whop them at a distance with. Och, my head . . ." I rubbed my brow and winced at the throbbing pain, which was beginning to resemble someone taking a mining pick to the inside of my horns.

Valen flicked the equivalent of golem innards off of his flail on the ground. The General had gotten through the entire fight without a scratch, still looking perfectly tempting-yet-consternated. I'd been thrown around like a sack of grain by the golem that he'd dismantled, and I would bet good money looked very much like that sack of grain. "Polearm?" the tiefling affirmed in a questioning tone in my vague direction. Solaufein didn't follow the same line of thought the tiefling had and raised a confused white brow, while I got it and felt a little sheepish.

I wasn't used to close-quarters fighting and was impossibly more at ease in an open battlefield, but I could definitely kill when backed into a corner as I'd proven on the cursed elf isle. I had plenty of practice dismantling Zhents in close quarters, but they weren't the size of golems. A massive golem looming over me, of course I'd be inexperienced. How many folks spend their careers battling those sorts of monsters? I'd be properly squished if I tried anything up close as the General had done.

"Poleaxe," I admitted as this was undoubtedly his question - the first weapon I'd actually trained with. It was a smattering of mixed techniques I'd absorbed while I was stationed in the north from the Greycloaks, filtered with the odd technique from my father and whatever I picked up from the folks surrounding me. "Though to be honest, I'm better with a spear or a scythe than anything. I had a big one in the war I loved until it broke. You see any gardening or farming equipment? Keep an eye out. I'm fierce with a shovel too." It was about the only decent skill I'd developed as a result of all the farm chores as a girl. I could cut quite a bloody swathe through a field of grain or blood with a proper scythe. This at least got a smile out of the General, which brightened up my headache.

"Stay close to Deekin for now," Solaufein commanded in that simple, suggestive way of his that made it seem like it was my idea in the first place. I agreed enthusiastically. The last thing I wanted to be was on the front lines while we delved into this ancient golem factory, setting off all the traps and alerting all the enemies with my clonking boots. Aside from a few small emergency blades strapped to me outside my armor, all I had to fight with in a melee was a whip that was more useful as a distraction and disarming tool than as an actual weapon, despite its heavy enchantment that Deekin finally got around to identifying as a lacerating effect. Ugly thing made you bleed more and faster when you got lashed with it. I remembered, quite vividly, how it felt clenched and pulsing around my throat. I kept it mostly because it gave me joy to handle in knowing Akordia would never touch it again, though it was obviously of no help against something with rocks for skin.

Once first setting foot on the isle from Cavallas' boat, we'd run into a camp of duergar scavengers willing to trade with us who honestly had little to offer beyond warning us off of their bounty. They gave us some spare potions in exchange for us promising to clear the first level for them, so they could harvest any metal remnants Valen didn't smash into countless irreparable shards. Without a proper rapscallion in our employ, we had to rely on Deekin's senses (and our own noses and ears) to detect traps. For the first time in ever I caught myself wishing Bishop and his pesky wolf were here to sniff out traps ahead. Solaufein seemed confident of our good chances (but whoever heard of a drow optimist?) and Valen had a surprisingly keen eye for traps, so we were able to avoid the bulk of them without getting singed.

Avoiding the golems who apparently had orders to smash every intruder was another matter, and every time we tried to run away from them and hide in a side room, that room was _also _full of golems looking to pummel us. The disrepair of the walls screamed 'inactive wizard lab, come raid me' while the insides full of traps and mindless servants seemed to indicate that it was still a fully functional mage's laboratory. I had mixed feelings about setting my first toe in there; while I liked the Seer, and she seemed like she was the sort who could use a golem army, she wasn't the one getting thrown into walls for the sake of it. I was safer as a cooking slave.

We'd taken to using a spare quarterstaff to pat the walls and floors ahead of us, at the cost of taking any of our enemies by surprise. The first corner of the underground lab, which was visually reminded me _intensely _of Undermountain in a very bad way, golems had manifested. At first they were just the clay variety, already worn-down and covered in battle scars from skirmishes with the duergar and other attempted raiders. They fell apart easily under the weapon master's flail-heads. The automatons had clearly been patrolling the corridors on the master's orders and emitted only strange sounds that none of us could identify; repetitive names I had guessed, or perhaps their command spell had begun to decay and their speech had devolved into gibberish. I'd fallen asleep in my academy lessons on transmutation.

Aside from the one that managed to rattle me, I kept my distance and made entropic and hell-fiery holes in their forms while Solaufein and Valen tore them apart. It was a functional system that had kept everyone from dying and severe maiming so far. Every side door that we could manage to break open or happened to be left unlocked was filled with even more hostile mistakes of nature, which started to present a problem when we began to tire out from the constant surprises and hitting things. It'd essentially been a non-stop fight as soon as we started descending, and the idea of fighting more of them down to the heart of whatever was producing them was beginning to fill us all with dread. Especially Deekin, who had taken to humming his Doom song under his breath.

While my head was still pounding and I was rubbing my brow, we continued onward through the winding dungeon's halls. There was dim blue-tinted magelight suspended from globes on ceiling chains that reflected back the grime on the floors and walls that had accumulated over the countless years they'd been left uncleaned. It was so shiny that it was almost pretty, and quite distracting, so I might be forgiven for nearly running into the back of Valen's armor again. At a moment I noticed we had all gone alert, and after a split second of silence it was clear why - something was coming toward us in the dark, creeping through the halls ahead.

It was a shuffle, or drag - not quite a gait, so it clearly wasn't one of the Maker's children. The steps were too irregular, too unique. My ears weren't as good as an elf's, so I looked to Solaufein who had gained a somewhat pained, or consternated expression that made me want to laugh. I caught his eye with my stare and quirked up an eyebrow to silently question it, but the news wafted to me before he could utter it. A slight breeze brushed past my nose carrying the smell of sweat and death - specifically of rotted, old flesh.

"Smells like Berger," Deekin piped up, taking the words right out of my mouth.

"Sinthesti," a tired, hollow voice rasped out from around the corner. The shuffle became a shamble of limbs as none other than a flesh golem flopped around the corner, dragging one limp and malfunctioning leg behind it. Green and brown and black, it was somehow even more disgusting than Halaster's pseudo-son, but I didn't want to take the chance that this one was also adopted by a wizard so I flung an arm out in front of Solaufein who had already drawn Enserric in preparation.

"Don't kill it!" I practically begged with surpressed sarcasm. "My arse can't take another arch-wizard's angry geas!"

The drow gave me withering look that I completely earned and deserved. "The taste of flesh golem is truly revolting," Enserric agreed with me, "no thank you, wielder mine."

"It's not attacking," the General spoke up, sounding surprised.

I looked over to our colorful addition and then back to the approaching golem around the corner. The golem continued shambling as if it hadn't noticed us in its approach. Its pace neither slowed nor sped up, and it made no kind of acknowledgment or threat. "It looks like it's malfunctioning," I pointed out aloud. "It might not be able to hear or see us."

The rotting flesh heap continued on its way and we all stepped aside to let it pass right through us. It continued its heaving, limp-legged way until it stopped short of the remains of the clay golem that had thrashed me. It didn't do anything other than stop, and seemed to stare into the silence. Slowly, painfully, it raised one trembling arm in front of its body to hover with its peeling, green-and gray palm facing down toward the remnants of its fellow. Its mouth opened to croak out the same thing it had said before, "Sinthesti." A nonsensical, obsessive mantra. I racked my brain for everything I knew about beast languages and the arcane, but nothing came to mind.

"What gross-fleshy be doing?" Deekin asked aloud in confusion. One arm-extended and the golem simply stood there, trembling in place on its gimp leg.

The pieces of the clay golem beneath our boots began to move of their own accord, rolling forward against reason to the flesh golem. Without warning or pre-emptive remark, Enserric became a shining red blur in the air as it sliced through the flesh golem's arm and swung back to cut off the creature's head. The golem all tumbled down into pieces of a heap of stink, drawing a reflexive cringey whine from Enserric and nose-plugging from Deekin and I. "This one must be repairing the phindari," Solaufein reasoned and sheathed his sword before Enserric could talk back or complain about golem stank. He'd been teaching my Ilythiiri in down moments, and I knew phindar was one of those funny drow words that could mean anything from 'fucking garbage' to 'you guys' depending on its context.

"Quick thinking," the General complimented despite his nose still being wrinkled. He shook it off far easier than I. "I'd hate to have to fight any of these things twice. What do you think it was saying?"

Solaufein scratched his head in a rather adorable way that I carefully didn't comment upon. "It is dismembered . . . I do not see how we would ask it."

"I think we can agree this is Deekin's fault," I announced. "So he should definitely get the next geas."

Solaufein's teeth flashed white in the din in a quick grin. "But what are the odds of running into another mad wizard?" He dared to ask aloud.

I glared at him, but he probably couldn't see it. I hoped my eyes were glowing, because he needed to know how mad I was. "Stop tempting fate! You're going to get us both killed. Then what will Valen tell the Seer?"

"Oh, I'd just leave you here and say the golems got to you if it came down to it," the General assured us nonchalantly and a little too quickly to sound entirely innocent.

"You've clearly given it some thought," I observed politely.

"Clearly I have." Gods damn him, I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

Solaufein's eyes slipped into the spectrum of heat and took on a glowing red sheen once more. It was the only way that I was able to detect his eyeroll, this time. "You are being dramatic."

Someone had said that to me once a while ago. He'd said it right before the incident that resulted in my assignment to dump escorts for the duration of the Luskan conflict. I didn't remember for the life of me what happened except a lot of liquor must have been involved, and I had a vague memory of a snowglobe being involved. I knew Bishop'd gone and cursed me, and I so vividly recalled being so thoroughly annoyed in the moment that I'd kicked him repeatedly in the shin. I might have been Bishop's only friend, but it had stung in the moment that he hadn't listened to my instincts. I faulted him entirely for that dragon swooping in later, and he deserved all the shin injuries he could stand. I didn't possess enough nerve to kick Solaufein, plus I actually liked him unlike that other useless hairy arse, so I just snorted about it. Neither he, nor Solaufein understood how downright ridiculous my luck was. It wasn't superstition, but it might have been an actual curse. I don't know why these things always happen to me, they simply do. I was starting to understand that these sort of things only tend to happen around certain types of people. You don't run into madmen conducting experiments with causality in the wilderness, or a dungeon, unless you're the mad sort to wander into wildernesses and dungeons in the first place.

I didn't want to die again (especially not so soon), so I maintained my distance from Solaufein down the hall a bit after that and kept a close eye on him from afar since it worried me that he was so cavalier about these matters at times. Then again, he'd held my hand while I was dying twice so far within the span of roughly two weeks and together we'd been through so much, _much_ worse - and he'd survived as I had, arse-up and humor intact. Worrying about him felt strange since I knew he was more than capable of watching out for himself, but it was as if I couldn't help myself. I just _worried_, uselessly, about the next thing coming around the corner that would come charging at him because he'd tempted Beshaba. (I didn't worship any gods, but I was justifiably afraid of several.)

The tunnels got smaller, and then wider at several points and seemed to go in what felt like loops. Solaufein was certain we were making progress and the air smelled different even if the halls looked to same, so we were definitely going deeper in - and further down. We did go in a loop at one point, and then found the proper corridor - but there was a massive metal adamant door blocking the way. It looked like it hadn't been used in some time, so we were puzzled as to the necessity or location of the key - and additionally, there was no keyhole that any of us could find.

For a few moments we had to sit back and take a break from the mystery, and admit we were stumped. Well, they took a break. I took a brief nap, until another small breeze through the halls hit my nose and put me on the alert. More and more these tunnels were reminding me of Undermountain - and the smell of dark elven poison and sweat brought me right back to Akordia's camp. "Drow coming," I announced, only to find everyone had gone on simultaneous alert having figured out the same thing.

By habit now, the motion was fluid as I pulled the aspect of the spider in my head from my memory and planted it into my palm, ready to slap the spell on Solaufein's back. "Give it to Valen," the drow commanded instead. He looked to the kobold next. "After she is done, spell us into invisibility," he told Deekin who nodded and started to hum.

I looked to the tiefling with a raised eyebrow and glowing, open palm. I wasn't sure how the General felt about me touching him - he'd been very much on edge around me most of the time - but he didn't flinch when I placed my hand on his green mithril pauldron and let the spell release into him. "Give 'em a taste of the Hells, aye?" I grinned at him and drew my whip with one hand and let some hellfire slip into my other. A moment later we disappeared, and a drow patrol rounded the corner making their careful way around the traps just as we had.

The circle we'd gone in had been a loop around a defunct golem laboratory, where we found most of the recent duergar and unmentionables' corpses. It was a strange room accessible from a single unlocked door that we decided would make the best spot to wait in ambush, after the patrol passed us by. Deekin had stopped humming and hid and as long as we held still in the room, Solaufein was certain our heat signatures would be so confused to enemy eyes that there was no way for them to be certain of where we were. They'd slip into the visible spectrum to assess the scene, and then we would strike.

It was a good plan, up until the point where it involved me. I couldn't blame anyone else for what happened. Something was tickling my nose the entire time - just dust from the air, most likely. It hadn't been the first time that I'd had to sneeze down there, and while I did everything in my power to physically stop myself - it's just not possible to stop a sneeze when it's coming. It was small, even dainty because I'd tried to muffle it. Not my usual earth-shattering sneezes. It came out almost like a quiet little feminine snort, and while I felt relieved in the seconds that followed it since I heard nothing, I could practically _feel_ everyone's invisible glowers.

I couldn't understand what the drow patrol in the corridor were saying since they did it in their language, but it was clear that they'd heard something since they started shuffling around. A part of me just wanted to say 'fuck it' and charge in, but my most recent near death experience had awakened my long-missing survival instinct.

Then, the oddest thing happened. From further away, far down the hall a strange noise echoed and drew the patrol into silence. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was the sound of steam escaping a kettle. Suddenly the sounds of the drow patrol's voices rose in volume and became panicked, and there was a loud shuffle. The floor vibrated as whatever the steam-sounding thing was shook the ground it stepped upon.

The sounds of battle suddenly erupted, metal clashing on metal, feet scrambling and pained and bloody cries. We waited a collective three seconds before the door opened and a team of four drow warriors and one female diviner poured inside in a panic. We didn't wait before striking - I went for the healer first out of habit and tripped her up with the whip, going for my kukri as I came out of invisibility. She managed to roll away before I could get her, but the whip held leg in place despite its armoring and she quickly became one of Enserric's victims in a shining crimson throat-slash. Solaufein immediately engaged another two, focusing on defensive movements and deflections in a blur of swordplay while Valen finished off one, and Deekin managed to hit the last with an ice-bolt that spread frost so fast it impeded his enemy's ability to walk. That one I got with a neck-stab with the kukri instead.

There was still the matter of the thing they had been fleeing from, however.

I may have fallen asleep in the academy class on transmogrificationorwhateveritscalled, but I knew they could be made of any substance and in any shape whatsoever. Why someone in their right _or _left mind would create one to resemble a minotaur is perhaps one of the questions I slept through; implausibly, a massive metal minotaur ducked into the doorway of the dark room and let out a puff of steam from its nostrils, opening its mouth to reveal an inner heat source that powered its movement from whatever core it possessed. It wielded a massive hammer in its hands that was spattered with purple drow blood and brown mortal worse.

"Ah shit," was all I could really say before backing as far away as I could into the wall and trying to prepare mentally any spell that would help me tear through solid steam-powered metal. I could soften it with fire, but that might hurt whoever it was trying to smash as well.

"Minogon!" Deekin scratched out, backing up right next to me. "It shoots lightning!"

"Wha—did you memorize Volo's monster manual?!" I demanded, continuing to inch away from the approaching construct, which appeared to be _very _angry but that might have been my imagination.

"It be a staple for the modern adventurer!" Deekin reedily defended.

Valen's philosophy toward violence was innately Uthgardt, though he didn't know it - the General snarled out a battle cry about leaping into flames and charged at the Minogon just as it raised its hammer to bring it down to squish him. He ducked under the blow and rapped it across the chest with his massive flail, making it clang and take a single step back - the force of the blow clearly startled the construct who took a moment to re-orient itself in the doorway before advancing again.

"Get it away from the door!" Solaufein called out to everyone in general and hovered in place somewhat uselessly as he had realized that Enserric wasn't going to be exactly useful against a creature of this size and make-up.

"Then it'll get closer to us!" I complained, but complied and loosed an entropic whip of light I'd kept coiled in my gut for such a distraction, shining green as grass as it wrapped neatly around the base of the Minogon's hammer's head. Just as the construct started to swing with a second blow, I yanked on the whip and pulled it a little off-course, allowing it to miss Valen's head so the tiefling could get in another devastating blow with his flail's dual heads that successfully dented the chassis of the creature. Finally, it stumbled away from the door.

I was jerked forward just as the Minogon tried to wrench his hammer away from me. There was no way for me to disarm it and I couldn't dispel any energy that came _from _me, so I ended up getting yanked into the wall again with a little less clatter than before as the light-whip went taut. I was at least prepared for it, and didn't hit my head that time.

The denting of his body seemed to enrage the Minogon in the doorway who opened its mouth to let out another huff of steam out of its core, and emitted an eerie screech from its malfunctioning throat. I felt my hair begin to stand on end, and dreaded whatever was going to happen next.

I pulled on the energy whip, releasing my hold just as an electrical burst of energy swept a circular path at everything in the Minogon's way, pushing us all back as we tried to raise our arms to defend against it. Valen alone stayed upright, but did skid back a few feet on the ground while the rest of us were pressed down by the shockwave.

There had been drow that had survived the mutual golem-us assault. We hadn't been aware of it due to the construct hovering in the doorway, but only five of the war party had managed to run inside in an attempt to flank it. They'd been met with unexpected resistance. The other three, including a female wizard, another crossbowman, and another dual-wielding swordsman had remained on the other side in an attempt to flank _it_ and dispel its protections. We'd disrupted their plan in an elegant fashion and drawn the Minogon's attention just as it began to get hit on the other side with an unexpected array of spells.

Whatever magic struck the construct's back caused it to stumble forward in a groan of metal colliding against metal, finally bringing it completely out of the doorway but unfortunately closer to us. This allowed the other three drow to notice us, and get in a few cheap shots. I got struck in the pauldron with a poison-tipped bolt that sizzled uselessly against my scales, along with Valen who simply brushed his off when it struck his mithral, while Deekin abruptly entered into invisibility again with an 'eep' in startle. Solaufein, now closest to the door, got hit right in the face with the full force of one of the wizard's spells that was aimed at the Minogon.

I couldn't help it - I laughed at my friend's predicament even as I fought. It had been a 'disintegrate' spell clearly and purposefully designed to kill golems, and it missed its target completely and fizzled on Solaufein's armor which fell apart in clumps right off his body. He was completely unhurt, but suddenly naked for everything but his boots and his sword. "Bugger!" was all Enserric had to say at this development.

Solaufein, a true, consummate, professional killer, wasted no time wondering at his predicament and charged the wizard who had dis-robed him. The drow was so startled that she tried to simply run away - whatever contingency was on her lips didn't slam into place in time to protect her from Enserric, and her life was drained by the greedy sword in moments. It had never really occurred to me that Solaufein must have specifically been trained to fight against other drow, because he made short work of them even out of armor. Maybe even especially out of armor, since they all seemed a little confused and surprised.

Unworried and very amused, I focused on continuing trying to distract the Minogon as Valen ducked under its shockwaves and shuffling, striking it back as much as he could with his flail but not really doing anything but dent it. I couldn't pull out another whip to throw off its hammer blow in time and one of its hits managed to get the General in the side and sent him reeling. My fledging concern was unneeded as all the blow had done was change the tiefling veteran's temperament from 'focused' to 'incredibly pissed,' as his baby blues suddenly shined red as coals. With a snarl, the General got right back up on his feet and charged at the golem horns-first and flail swinging.

The Minogon didn't strike back. Valen's flail hit it twice in the chest, and all it did was stand there and get dented with its mouth open looking pretty silly and stupid. My eyesight wasn't too good in the dark, so I couldn't see exactly what had happened, but the minotaur-shaped metal monster abruptly fell over into pieces, its head toppling down first. Solaufein, still stark naked but for his speedy boots, stood behind the golem with Enserric drawn. What happened fell into place in my mind slowly - the General had just been the distraction while Solaufein managed to sneak behind the golem and pierce it right through its power core, located in its throat - the glowing heat that I'd seen when it had opened its mouth to emit steam generated from its movement.

"Huh," was all I could really say, and stare at all the lovely mess we'd made.

It took a few moments for Solaufein to even notice his predicament in full, and he stared down at himself with bemusement and tsked. I stared too because I couldn't really help myself. "Deekin," he called out.

The bard chirped out and entered out of invisibility from right next to me, causing me to let out a startled yelp. "Yes, erm, Boss?" The kobold was trying to politely look anywhere but at Solaufein's nakedness, but I wasn't even trying. I just grinned in appreciation.

"Have you spare leathers in your bag?" The drow inquired.

Valen, now calmed down and back to blue, let out a snort of repressed laughter as Deekin rummaged through his bag muttering.

"You can have _my _armor, Solaufein," I offered suggestively, plucking at my scales.

Solaufein smirked. "You have need of it far more than I. I was not struck once except by that spell."

I laughed, feeling much more at ease. "True. I am the one who keeps getting tossed into walls. Why do I get the feeling this has happened to you before?"

"Nau, this is new," he said. He seemed completely unbothered by his nudity, and I was reminded of the time that we had met. "And not entirely unwelcome. That chain . . . chafed," he revealed with a wince. "And limited my spell-casting. Switching to a lighter set might be better for me here."

It took a second for this to sink into my thick skull, a second occupied by unabashed staring at his assets. Then I put it together - he'd been wearing metal armor, which was known to inhibit arcane energies. He'd said before that drow wizards were the most dangerous of all. He'd been speaking from personal experience. "Solaufein, are you secretly a mad wizard?" I asked him quite seriously and made a concerted effort to make eye contact.

He smiled tellingly but said nothing. Deekin did eventually acquire a less protective, but intact set of leather armor he'd had as a back-up - something he apparently had always carried with him in the event of anyone's armor becoming damaged beyond repair in field work. I supposed the bard had read Volo's Guide to Adventuring cover to cover and prepared for every possible thing that could go wrong - in the process of Solaufein dressing in his new more comfortable leathers, Deekin revealed he had potions of ropes, hooks, extra bedrolls, stoneflesh, dispelling scrolls, polymorphs, and more that he had acquired from Gulhrys in addition to our camping supplies and a small stash of dried and cut wood at the very bottom, a precious commodity in the Underdark that he'd been saving for an unknown special occasion if we ran out of dried rations and had to have a cooking fire.

Truly, he was the best bard of all.

We kicked the Minogon's shards out of the doorway but left the other enemies where they lay after a thorough looting of their persons, and recovered some spare rope, weapons, and pieces of armor; Deekin apparently was building a collection of scavenged supplies in his two bags of holding to drag back to the Seer and her people, just in case they had need of any extra arms. We heard no more noises out in the halls and everything seemed oddly quiet, so we decided to take the opportunity to rest and recuperate in the room we'd found.

Deekin summoned some light so that we could all see properly - useful since upon investigation, we discovered that the room we'd inadvertently chosen to hole up in had been one involved intimately in the construction of the mechanicals. In the center was a massive series of tubes and panels we had no idea the use of, arranged in an array of interconnected parts whose function eluded me. It was rusted from disuse and seemed to have a couple of moving levers and parts, but I was cautioned sharply against messing with anything when I tried to. There were a few molded texts scattered about, but none save one were intact enough to reveal anything useful.

Our intelligent bard was given the only intact book for perusal, and he was silently engrossed in his reading on the floor while the General, Solaufein and I tried to discern the use of the strange contraption and fed on some of the jerky the duergar were willing to part with. "This really is nasty stuff," I commented after a gritty mouthful. "What sort of animal you think it's from, anyway?"

"Rothe," Solaufein explained, which alarmed me because I'd been learning Ilythiiri from him slowly and I knew the word 'rothe' was interchangeable for 'slave' as well as the strange underground eyeless cattle that they kept around for sustenance. Solaufein had joked often about eating siltrin and I was starting to think it wasn't a joke, but he and Valen were both comfortably eating it, so I pushed down my paranoia and downed it with some water from my hip-skin.

"Why haven't you used any arcane magic before?" Valen suddenly asked, which drew my attention.

Solaufein paused in chewing as he considered this, and swallowed before he answered. "It is not my strength," he admitted. "All dhaerow know innate magic. I was skilled in my prime at its use, but no expert. As weapon master, I had to be trained in combative magic for twenty years."

"I can't imagine being stuck in that tower for twenty years," I admitted, trying and failing to picture such a miserable fate. Knowing drow and Solaufein's talent for understatement, he'd probably learned everything about magic at whip-point from some other mad wizard. It certainly explained his deep problem with every wizard we seemed to meet - at least the ones that weren't Nathyrra. We all liked Nathyrra a lot. "Knowing me I would've rioted after year five and burnt the place down to a crisp."

Solaufein chewed more jerky thoughtfully. "It is how it is done," he surmised after he was finished. "I am far more skilled with a sword. The sun weakens our innate magic, as it is strongest near our homeland amongst others of our kind. I suspect this is true for all elves, depending on where they are from. I will not be as skilled a caster as I was, for lack of practice, but I may be able to dispel most of what we will encounter below."

I considered how being in the actual Hells or being around other demons might affect mine (or Valen's) abilities and temperament by comparison. My magic was innate and wouldn't strictly be called 'magic' by any mage, given its Hellish nature. The 'why' of my abilities had always been a question that'd been on my mind; the Academy hadn't been of any help in my answer. All I learned through school was that at some point in my infancy, or even before, a pact was made without my consent involving my soul and a demonic benefactor. Which one, exactly was the real question. Mine could mimic the effects of most arcane spells though frankly I was more powerful than the average wizard, in terms of both variety and evocative power. Though, I didn't know of any arcane or eldritch magic that allowed one to heal with a touch, as Solaufein had done to me twice so far. That was strictly a gods-given talent. I doubted that was the sort of thing the strictly matriarchal drow society had taught a young Solaufein, though I did trust a drow society to teach someone a healing spell that pained the person it was cast upon.

As if he had read my mind, Valen asked aloud, "the healing magic you used before - that's not arcane, is it?" This was less of a question from the General's mouth and more of an astute observation that bordered on interrogation. Most of his questions sounded like this, actually.

I cleared my throat. "I was wondering about that too," I admitted plainly. "That's divine magic, innit?"

Solaufein's explanatory reply was short and to the point. "No. And yes. That, I learned elsewhere in my travels." It was odd to hear him be curt about personal details since he was usually forthcoming to me one-on-one, but perhaps he didn't want Valen to know - or Deekin to know, because then the bard might write it into the story. Perhaps it was a personal matter. I let it drop despite my curiosity, because the spell and skill had been quite useful to me so far and I didn't want to pry into unwelcome matters.

I drifted in thought, but it might have been a dream. I thought of winter hitting my home. I started to picture the snowy flurries from the Sea of Swords over my home falling to the earth in gentle clumps as I'd seen it in that brief gander in the flying elf queen's looking glass. I missed the weather. I missed the trees. In my mind's eye, I drifted through the snows

. . . But I saw no trees, only the white blankness of the plains near Beorunna's Well . . . Bleak and seemingly endless, with still and icy piles by my feet in a hauntingly familiar pattern. I walked past them feeling like I'd been here before, I'd seen this before, I'd done this before - and ahead I could almost see a familiar snow-dusted dark hood, with that yellow-eyed wolf prowling ahead at his side. Karnwyr loped back to sniff my hand and bump it, and I could swear that I could feel the wetness of his nose through my fingerless glove. It was half-memory and half-dream, I think. I followed them through the ice until I woke as we approached a mountain.

To my awareness it took Deekin only a short while, perhaps half an hour, to examine the moldy text and determine their worth. I'd had myself a very brief snooze by accident and was startled into wakefulness with a snort as the lizard let out a victorious warble. "Deekin gots it!" The lizard crowed.

I half-processed what he meant and immediately felt alarmed as my mind had started to drift back even further into memory. "Was it the pox?! I thought it was a wart!"

"What? Uh," Deekin seemed confused. I glanced up blearily where he was a few feet away. "No," the kobold decided slowly, "though Deekin not sure what that means, but he also kind of be glads he not knows. No, Deekin figure out what golems be saying!"

Solaufein and Valen had been lurking about and swam in my blurry vision for a moment before settling as figures. Where had I been? Had I really fallen asleep so easily? I breathed out a breath that felt . . . Cold, and it made me shiver. The dungeon was hardly the warmest place. "Bah! Why I am so cold?" I grumbled and stood up, shaking myself and my limbs to restore some blood flow.

While I muttered to myself snippily and shook out my legs and tail to restore blood flow, Deekin went on to explain: "they be saying their names. Well, sort of like their names. It be a number that the Makers give them, so he knows which golems they be. They say the words that mean these numbers . . . Er, Deekin not really sure why the gross fleshy one be doing that actually, but it kinds of be moot now that he be in pieces. Other golems have numbers too, each one different. And this big thing - Deekin find drawings of it in book, and it helps summon and repair golems! Or destroys them. Drawings not really be clear on which. Ooh, maybe both!"

The drow and tiefling looked over the device with renewed interest, but when Valen tried to touch one of the dials, it let out a startling shock that audibly clapped the air and blinded us briefly for a moment. Valen wasn't really hurt, just startled by the electrical burst, but it put some of his hair standing on end which made me laugh, which made him glower as he smoothed out his crimson ponytail at the nape of his neck.

"It is likely broken," Solaufein reasoned. "Or trapped. Is there anything that can help us get to a lower level, to find this Maker?"

Deekin's eyes scoured through the text as quickly as he could turn pages with his hands. "Er, no, but there should be key somewhere. How else anybody getting ins or out? We coulds just throw Boss-Lady at it til it breaks too, that usually work, right?"

My cold-fuzzled and sleepy brain processed this a second behind Solaufein, who chuckled. "Oi, no more tossing of the Boss-Lady!" I insisted. Then I thought about it. "Though if it helps us get a golem army I guess I can tolerate a tossing or two."

"Could you burn a door down with hellfire?" Valen wondered, still trying to smooth out his crimson locks from the frying.

I envied his hair for a vain moment before considering this. "Hmmmmaybe! Be a new first, if it worked. I could definitely destroy any wards on a door that way, at least. Might melt a lock and make it inoperable, though—"

"Oh!" Deekin called out again, this time with a happy chirp. "Deekin gots it!" The kobold reached out with his left hand, still holding the book with his right, and pulled sharply down a lever on the contraption.

I was afraid for a moment he'd be electrocuted to death, but he wasn't. The room suddenly became bright instead, and I had to blink away the spots in my eyes that nearly blinded me. Solaufein's hiss of pain was more telling, as he was likely still using that heat-vision thing of his, which no doubt hurt fierce when looking at visible light. A few fires from empty braziers suddenly blazed blue with power and gave the room a chilly glow. I hadn't been able to see the golem contraption clearly, and seeing it so didn't actually aid in my understanding of its function in any way whatsoever. It was something from another world, all pipes and strange tubes, levers with no pulleys and thrumming with strange magic.

"Xsa dos, lu'xsa ussta solen!" Solaufein bemoaned into his palms, covering his eyes with his hands. Instinctively, I put a hand on his back in comfort even though I realized in the moment that it was a useless gesture that had become some strange habit when it came to the drow; he was often doing it for me, and it was as if neither of us could help but reach for the other when we were in pain. I patted his back in sympathy and felt funny about it, but in a way it felt right and he didn't stop me, so it must have been fine. I'd simply never felt protective of someone before, and hadn't gotten used to it.

Outside the corridor was an abrupt and resounding 'thud' that shook the floor of one, or several doors opening simultaneously. We - that is Valen, Solaufein and I - shared consternated looks with one another (Solaufein through his fingers) in a rare moment of silent communion that spoke volumes, but said nothing. Valen looked like he wanted to wring Deekin's neck. Solaufein looked like he wanted to rip the whole machine to pieces. I probably looked constipated because of the nasty nauseous anticipation that developed in my gut when I thought of all the golems we _hadn't _killed or dismembered yet.

"What just happened?" I asked fearfully of the air.

"Deekin just opens door to the lower levels," the kobold calmly confirmed. He had a moment of second-guessing where he looked back at his book to double-confirm, but then nodded. "Yep, Deekin sure that be what this lever does."

"I'm afraid to ask what the others do," the General sulked.

"Other than electrocuting goat-man?" the little bard sniped, slamming the book in his hands shut with a dusty thud. "Not much! It so old it probablys be broken. But other golems maybe hear the noise now, so Deekin thinking maybes we shouldn't stays here long. Don't worry, Deekin finds map of lair in book. Kind of be dumb that duergar not get this far and finds map before us, but they not be havings little Deekin to help."

"You," Solaufein pointed a little angrily at the bard's general direction since he was still trying to shade his eyes with his other hand, "you will warn me next time!"

"Deekin sorry Boss," the bard apologized, sounding actually sorry for once. "Deekin just get excited when he finds the right switch."

Solaufein glared, but it was more of a pained squint so it didn't carry its usual weight. I held back an amused snort. "The next geas is _yours_," he vowed to the kobold. "Remember this."

"Deekin remembers," the bard vowed back without even a hint of sarcasm. He was a great actor.

Past the adamant doors to the second level was a long dark corridor that led to a battle field. No duergar or living bodies were present, strangely - each of them were constructs that had fought each other. Where they lay reminded me of battlefields past, finding Greycloaks and Luskans dusted by the snow, dead where they lay with their weapons by their sides. Somehow praiseworthy and ignoble at the same time, I wondered what reason they might have died for. I was certain at a glance that these golems had been fighting each other. Who was fighting who was in question, but the atrium we found ourselves in was huge and _full _of their limp, dismembered, un-animated forms. Flesh, clay, even ones seemingly made of bronze and silver. I'd thought that the wizard's tower on the previous isle was strange, but this one might have taken the cake.

"What in the bloody shite happened in here? Why would they kill each other?!" I wondered aloud, hoping someone would figure out something I had missed.

"Modrons fighting modrons," Valen reported, sounding distant. "Senseless. Were they programmed to do this?"

"Programmed?" I asked him, feeling confused.

"Their given set of instructions," he explained after seeming surprised by the question for a silent moment. Sometimes he said things that made my head spin, and it made me think that was how Solaufein must've felt whenever he stumbled verbally on me. "When they're made, whatever they're told by their creator to do. It's all they know how to do. They can't do something contrary to their programming, so they must have been programmed to kill each other. My question is the same as yours—why?"

I considered this for a second and a barrage of existential questions began to plague me. I stared down at the bodies in growing horror as something clicked in my mind. "What if they are told to question their existence?"

"Depends on how complex they are," the General reasonably continued. "Modrons are only as complicated as the task they're designed to perform."

"What is modrons?" Solaufein perked up at the new word, always devouring language and knowledge, he was. It always made me smile.

"Constructs from Mechanus."

I racked my Academy memories in my brain. "Is that the plane you're talking about or that Gond temple?"

Valen seemed cagey about responding. "I traveled . . . To a lot of the planes, in the Blood Wars." Valen was an unexpected font of useless information about the planes, from probably being a Planar himself. Someday I'd love to feed him some mead and hear his life story, but not while were we caught in golem-vs-golem fight.

"How does Prime compare, General?" I asked him on a whim.

Valen considered this, and the bodies surrounding us - some metal and stone, some flesh and blood. "About the same, actually," he admitted with surprise and a wry smile. "At least, lately I've been feeling a little closer to home."

I let out a startled bark of laughter.

The halls got brighter and cleaner the further we went down, until we eventually hit a fork in the road. Right or left became our options at that point. None of us could make a case for why we should go one way or the other, so I think Solaufein must've chosen at random. The one path he did pick led us down a narrow corridor of dim, dank heat and light that seemed to widen into mining tunnels the further in we got.

Solaufein approached one of the walls and placed his hands along the grooves that had been made. "Duergar," he noted. He looked over to the General. "What is all we know of this Maker?"

Valen paused to think, his tail twitching and drawing my eye. "Duergar mage, at least five hundred years old. It's possible this place once housed many duergar before this Maker fellow made all of these."

"His name be Alsigard," Deekin piped up expertly as he flipped through his journal of impossibly extensive notes. "He probablys be very olds and crotchedy now. Older than old dwarf, Deekin thinks. Stories say he builds entire city of golems underground, on island."

Solauefin had paid little attention to these answered and his focus seemed trained on something in the distance that only his heat vision could see. "We are getting closer to a lava floe," he announced. "Or a very large forge."

I thought of the Minogon. "Does that mean more metal minotaurs? Please say no."

Solaufein shrugged and gave a gleaming, white-toothed smile. It really did seem like the more doomed we got, the more reasons he and I found to smile. "We will dismantle whatever challenges us. We are quite fearsome, nau?"

At the bottom of the hallway was the golem army we'd been looking for all along. We emerged to a see of blank metallic faces that turned to look at us as we descended into their territory. None of us drew our weapons save Valen, whose flail clinked readily at his side - the General was always prepared for war. It was so warm that I couldn't possibly have shivered, but impossibly I did under the stares of all those blank-faced automatons. There must have been at least thirty of them wandering about and lining the walls that stopped to turn to study us in our approach.

As if they were expecting us, one amongst them that was roughly my height stepped forward. He was made seemingly of gold and shined like a statue of an impossibly tall duergar, proportionate but clearly built for labor. I wondered if he had been one of the miners who had carved out those corridors, but there was no way to know. There we stood, all four of us surrounded by golem-kind and tongue-tied. The golden golem loomed and drew our attention, and I - I was always ready to meet new people and incredibly tired of all the fighting, so I stepped up when no one else did and greeted with a wave, "Hullo. Mind tellin' us who you are, if you're not going to smash us? Are you going to smash us? Er."

The golem shifted. It was subtle, a nearly humanoid gesture and so small I almost missed it. He had been on guard, and suddenly the golden fellow had become at ease with my simple greeting. "No, that is not our designated task," he informed me competently in a voice as golden and metallic as his body. "I have been named Ferron. Though it has been some time since we have engaged in any designated task, it was not within our purview to harm fellow sentient beings. You are sentient beings, correct?" It was eerie, but too fluid to simply be a commanded remark. I had no doubt that the question was original, and not something he was 'programmed' to say.

I thought about his question and looked to the others. They didn't seem to have any input, but Solaufein's hand strayed away from his sword and his gaze was fixed on the golem army with interest. With no objections, I went on. "That answer always depends on who you're asking. Sentience is a difficult subject. I'm sure you understand that."

"Oh, I do." Ferron's voice lit up with what, in a humanoid, I would call interest.

"So you're the Maker's fabled children?" Deekin piped up, coming up to my side.

Ferron's golden gaze swung down to regard the tiny bard with the same interest as before. It seemed to me that he was studying us as he spoke. "Are we truly a fable?" He asked rhetorically. "It is hard to conceptualize for organic creatures, but we have continued our existence here regardless of what has happened on the outside of the world. As isolated as we have been on this island, and forbidden as we are to leave, it is strange to think that there may have been those above who have forgotten us down below."

That did it for me. This wasn't a golem army. It was the remains of an entire golem _city. _Ordinary constructs weren't capable of rhetoric or advanced thought. They didn't choose to attack or not. They didn't pause to talk, answer questions, or study you like you were a new specimen. I nodded to Ferron with new regard. "You haven't been forgotten," I explained carefully, knowing my next words would count for more than their weight. "But we weren't sure if there were any, er, people down here still intact. All the automatons above were keen on smashing us to bits the second they saw us. You're not like that, though."

Ferron nodded in a perfect mimicry of my gesture that I found strangely flattering. "We are programmed to defend this territory from intruders, but our close connection to the Power Source has enabled us to retain to our memories, unlike our brethren upstairs."

He said the term 'power source' as if it was something I should understand the implicit importance of, but considering I slept through all those classes, I was drawing a complete blank. I tried to put together what he might mean from context. "The power source is — why you're like this? Capable of talking, even when the others upstairs just repeated those numbers?"

"They are malfunctioning without repairs, and were not designed with the advancements we were," the golem beside Ferron, a silver color explained in a slightly higher voice.

"I'm sorry, what's your name?" I asked, when I realized I only knew Ferron's name and hadn't even introduced ourselves. Luckily all these golems seemed new at the whole humanoid-interaction thing, so they weren't phased and didn't consider it rude.

"I have not decided upon one yet," the silver golem answered.

"We each choose our names," Ferron explained.

"Ah. Well, us squishy types get named by our parents," I provided. "I'm Binne, the little one here is Deekin, the angry one is Valen, and that's Solaufein. Not to be rude, because I'm sure you don't mind, but we're in a bit of a hurry and it seems like you have an entire golem army here, which is exactly what we're looking for. Are you interested in allying with us to fend of some invaders that are trying to take over the entire Prime material plane, and enslave it to their will?"

Ferron and the silver golem looked at each other, and then they both looked out at the sea of other golems who seemed visibly to lack any opinion. "I must consult with my brothers on your request," Ferron announced. "Excuse me."

Politely, the first golems who'd had the good courtesy of speaking to us before attempting to smash us disappeared down a hallway as he deliberated with his fellows our request. It was more my request, though since I was the one that was willing to do the talking. The entire mining corridor and seemed to empty out into a nearby hall of all the golems, save a few who continued to stand impassive guard alongside the walls. It was smart, as I wouldn't leave a group of strangers in my home without someone to watch them.

"This is a bad idea," Valen kept insisting.

"It's better than trying to kill them, isn't it?" I reasoned, reasonably.

"Why did we let her talk to them?" The tiefling lamented.

I was a little offended at the presumption in his tone, that was I doomed to failure in this endeavor, so I turned my nose up into the air and enjoyed Solaufein's rumbling laughter. "Would you rather speak to them instead?" The drow reasoned right back at Valen on my behalf. If I were a bird, I would preen.

"I'd rather they not speak at all," Valen growled. "This is getting ridiculous."

If it wasn't automatons trying to smash us, it was automatons trying to talk us to death. I could empathize a little, he wasn't much of a talker. Down near the lava floe we'd stumbled into Ferron and his small army of about twenty silver, copper, and iron constructs all built to be the shape of extremely tall and stocky duergar and it hadn't boded well at first glance. Ferron had spoken as we'd approached with no threat in his tone, although it was quite hard to judge a golem by his tone of voice when it all sounded metallic and strange to our ears. I'd been excited at the prospect of speaking to one so intelligent while the others save Deekin had been leery of it.

Ferron had greeted us plainly and asked us if we intended to loot the place. He and his allies struck me as no ordinary golems right from the start. Normal golems didn't use words like, "please," "thanks," and question me about my sentience. They simply barked out orders according to what they were commanded to do. Valen was right in his description of modrons, but these weren't simple modrons. I was earlier on the cusp of understanding that as I'd been examining the battlefield upstairs.

The golden automaton had described a war when I'd asked him what had happened. In his strange, atonal, even clinical recollection, he explained that his people - the shiny ones - had been in conflict with neighboring flesh golems led by another named 'Aghaaz' whom he addressed as his brother. Each of them were 'children' of the Maker, although Ferron was blunt in his understanding that he had been created for a purpose and not born blindly into the world. They existed to serve the Maker, until it occurred to him that the Maker might no longer wish to be served. The Maker, it seemed, had been silent for quite some time and had given no directions to his 'children' in the past few however long they'd been alive and sentient.

It was the idea of sentience that I'd really struggled with earlier to piece together. It takes a choice to take a life, and a golem can't be programmed to choose. If they kill, it's because they're told to do so. To kill each other, though? That's something else entirely. That spoke of sentience to me. Valen and Solaufein disagreed, but Deekin was on my side.

"We don't knows all the facts," Deekin had defended, when I'd tried to explain myself and failed. "All we knows is we don't wants to be in middle of golem fight."

"True enough," Valen had agreed, and Solaufein nodded. They'd been prepared to have to dismantle the entire small army. I was pretty confident we could win them over if we just . . . Asked them nicely. I didn't understand Valen's caginess in this situation entirely, as these golems had proven nothing but polite so far, and my mouth wasn't the thing that had gotten us into trouble back on the elf isle. _That _had been an accident of fate.

Being asked to do something is easy and common and simple. It's not a notion that you think much of, but to someone who had never been presented a choice in their entire lives about what they wanted to do with their life or time - even by the person that brought them into the world - well, it struck me as a big deal to a golem. I could've been wrong, but my instincts were telling me that I was doing the right thing even amidst my companion's mistrust and grumbling. I wanted to make sure that Ferron and his people had a choice that didn't involve fighting, if they didn't want to. Of course, there was still the golem-on-golem war we'd seen to address.

Ferron finally emerged after a few minutes of us stewing in uncertain silence and thought. The lava floe was some distance away, but it was having us all sweat in our armor, so he emerged at precisely the right moment. "Oh good, you've, er. Decided something?" I added with a hopeful question in my voice.

Ferron stared at me with blank, golden eyes. He came right up to eye level but was decidedly blockier than me, although I was sure due to my horns that I was technically taller. (I was just glad he wasn't a Minogon.) "We have," he intoned. Behind him, three silver golems of similar heights parked around us and started to study us passively. It made the others uncomfortable, but I was used to being stared at and practically preened. "We have engaged in debate and have elected myself as a representative to speak for our people."

"Congratulations on your appointment," I remarked, "I'm sure it was a landslide election. Have you reached a decision on our request?" I could be diplomatic when I wanted to be. I just . . . Usually preferred in the past to get drunk and to hit stuff with fire. Strange that I was turning a new leaf, down in the sunless Underdark.

Ferron would've blinked if he had eyelids, but he cocked his head in a curious way. The metal that encompassed his body seemed more fluid, in its enchantment, and the gesture seemed very normal for a humanoid to make. I wondered how much duergar was really in his brain, and how much was just what Valen would call programming. "Yes," he spoke after a few moments, "I understand your metaphor. As a rock or land slide, the majority of the votes went down to me. After much consultation, we have decided that it is contrary to our nature to stand by and let other sentient beings become exterminated by a force of enemies that outnumbers them."

The others looked like the words were hurting their brains, except Deekin who was writing it all down and nursing a hand cramp. "Er. Does that mean you'll help us?" I asked for clarification.

Ferron nodded after a moment's consideration, probably trying to figure out a way to summarize his thoughts for us tiny-brains. "It is unjust to stand aside while fellow sentient beings are destroyed," he concurred. "Four fifths of us have agreed to aid you and your people against your impending deconstruction."

"Four-fifths, that's a majority!" I crowed and threw up my hands victoriously.

"We have elected to aid you in exchange for your help in recovering the Power Source from my brother Aghaaz," Ferron went on, "preferably without violence."

Valen's flail clinked as he put it away, but the gesture made me a little hopeful for our continued negotiation even as my gut sank into my shoes at the thought of diplomatifying with more talking automatons. "Oh. Do you think he'll hand it over willingly if we ask nicely?"

Ferron paused, and the silver golem that was next to him before spoke up in his hesitation. "I do not believe so," the silver one piped up.

"I believe he can be reasoned with," Ferron corrected.

I pursed my lips in consideration. There was disagreement, which meant that we'd likely be getting smashed in our near future. That was according to my luck and so far. Solaufein for the first time since the negotiations started spoke up and came up to Ferron's level, drawing his attention from me. "Why do you call him your brother?" He wondered.

"We were molded same time," Ferron explained. "He and I are the eldest, and we both have been chosen by our people to represent them in our struggles. Aghaaz wishes to follow the Maker's will and has built a cult of ideology surrounding this that our younger brothers feed into."

"Not for nothing, but are any of you sisters?" I joked.

"I do not understand that question," the golem replied with the verbal equivalent of a frown.

"It is a question of gender, Ferron," the silver golem clarified. "She is asking if we are female, like her."

"But we have no gender." Ferron was confused.

I shook my head. "Forget I said anything," I dismissed uncomfortably. Clearly this Maker was male and made them in his image, considering they all resembled duergar with an enlargement spell and Ironskins. "Doesn't matter."

"I will forget it, then," Ferron vowed seriously.

"What if Aghaaz does not comply peacefully?" Solaufein pressed. "Do you want us to kill your brother?"

"No," Ferron said, and the silver one said, "it may come to that." Ferron stared down at the silver one for a moment before clarifying, "It may indeed come to violence. I would prefer it to be avoided at all costs. Organic beings are fragile, and Aghaaz is very powerful and has many allies who believe in his words. Please, approach him with caution."

"We could steals the Power Source if we knows where it is," Deekin offered.

Ferron shook his head in another surprisingly humanoid gesture that he'd acquired by mimicking me. "Aghaaz is the only one who knows where it is," he explained further. "He has threatened to destroy it, and would deny all of us sentience, if I tried to take it from him. He will not listen to me any more and is convinced that I and my people are heretics. But, without the Power Source, we can never be truly free."

Heretics? He wasn't kidding about the 'cult' part. "Are you saying he's built a religion around the Maker, and _that's _why you're all killing each other?" I guffawed. "He worships the Maker?"

"In a way, the Maker is our father," Ferron clarified, "but Alsigard has remained silent for too long. His words and commands are no longer relevant to our existence, as they have expired and he has not renewed them. I and my people wish to see the surface and what we can make of ourselves. Aghaaz wishes to remain behind and stagnate us. If it comes to violence between us, as it has in the past, we will aid you. I do not wish to see my brother's death, and I am hoping that he will listen to you as he has not listened to me."

Solaufein looked over at me with a measuring gaze. I wondered what he saw; I tried not to look at myself too closely. I was afraid I always fell short of expectations, but he eventually turned away and back to Ferron with a satisfied expression. "We will do our best," he promised.

* * *

"This is a bad idea," Valen promised under his breath, with one hand wrapped around his flail's hilt for security. Looking down at the heavy thing always gave me the willies, as I could only imagine how many like myself had fallen beneath its heads.

"Hush," Deekin instructed him, and let me do my talking thing.

I cleared my throat and stared up at the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my life - a _demon _flesh golem. I wasn't aware that it was even possible to build something out of so many different unusual parts, but impossible Aghaaz loomed over us all with mighty bat-wings and the head of half a balor, and half a tana'ri. It looked like it was at war with itself. It looked exactly like it belonged in a mad wizard's death dungeon, too.

It was setting both Valen and my own teeth on edge to be standing near him with the amount of power and strange rot that was wafting by my nose. It wasn't like being near a flesh golem that hadn't been repaired in months, although there were several more hale looking fleshy-variety golems that were wandering around Aghaaz' abode. He'd been situated on the opposite end of the second level, and we'd quite literally almost bumped into him after being given directions to his encampment by Ferron. They'd apparently, the two armies, reached a stand still after the battle field we'd stumbled onto in our initial descent.

"What is your verdict?" Aghaaz questioned in that deep, shivering voice of his. His tone was far more organic in composition, and his inflections far more natural than Ferron's. They seemed to have roughly the same level of intelligence, and the same level of confusion when it came to interacting with small organic beings.

I stared at the stitching on his chest that kept all those competing scaled and furred pieces together, and cleared my throat again when I tried to speak and my voice came out reedy. "We—ahem, we've discussed your plight amongst ourselves, and we—"

"_Dos_," Solaufein insisted, reminding me that this was definitely my idea.

"—_I_ have a few questions," I concluded confidently.

Aghaaz blinked. It was strangely easier for me to talk to this one than Ferron, just because he had horns and wings and was at least as freaky looking as I was. He lacked a tail, though, which made me a little relieved. Tails were the dignity of all demonkind, and I didn't like the idea of this Maker duergar fellow cutting off tails and sewing it onto his children. There were a few other smaller demonflesh golems made from succubi and slaadi parts that had wings and tails, and it made me a little uncomfortable. At least no genitalia had been included in their design - that was my eyes' saving grace. "I will consent to your question," Aghaaz decided magnanimously.

"I'm interested in, um." How to phrase this politely? "_How _do you know whether or not this Maker of yours is still alive?" We'd asked him about his silly religion and it had all seemed, well, silly.

"The Maker has infinite power," Aghaaz predictably defended. "Something as mutable as time could never kill him. He created us."

"Yes, so you've said and how often," I babbled, "but you haven't seen him in . . . How long's it been, do you reckon?"

Aghaaz' mismatched green and red eye moved back and forth over my form as he puzzled to recall. "It has been five hundred cycles," he eventually answered.

"Is that a few years, or a few months?" I asked.

"Five-hundred years," he revealed with a note of irritation in his voice. "Have you any more inane questions?"

I had dozens. I looked over to my companions for some silent encouragement, but they had none. None of us except Deekin seemed sure that this 'talking through your problems' thing was going to work, but I'd volunteered to give it a try when the other two admitted that it'd be simpler to just kill Aghaaz and be done with it. "Half a millennium is quite a while to play a game of hide and go seek with your children. You don't want people checking up on this Maker why, exactly?"

"It is forbidden," Aghaaz repeated for what must have been the third time when we'd asked to see the Maker. We hadn't mentioned our meeting with Ferron to him prior for fear it'd send him off on a religious tirade; within a minute of meeting Aghaaz and talking to him, he'd already asked us to kill Ferron for him in exchange for his own followers' aid against the Valsharess. "Those were his instructions," he repeated from memory. "He is not to be disturbed by his children, not ever."

Sounded like a bad parent. "Forbidden for you, certainly, but not for us," I pointed out. "I would think you would want your followers to have proof of faith, would you not? Otherwise they might start to believe like Ferron and his followers that there's nothing to this faith but blind trust and empty promises. You might be able to recruit Ferron back to your side if you had such proof. After all he's only a heretic because he doesn't believe the Maker is alive. 'Tis better to make friends of your enemies than slay them - that would be a truly complete victory because then you'd only gain allies and suffer no losses. You could easily just turn the other way, and let us go and find the Maker for you."

Aghaaz wasn't as impressed with my logic as I was. "Which would allow you access to the Power Source," he stated. The Power Source was, apparently, hiding near the entrance to the Maker's laboratory where he'd been reportedly sealed off for the last five hundred years. And was still somehow alive despite having no fresh air or food. I was starting to wonder if the Maker himself was just another golem. "You are an unknown quantity," Aghaaz went on, "and mortals are known to be tricky. I cannot risk it. The heretics must die, as I require evidence of your trustworthiness.

"Well, if you're interested in breaking any of your own silly commandments you could always come and see the Maker with us for yourself. We'll just ask him for you to speak to you when we get there, and we promise not to steal anything or touch the Power Source. While we're at it, why don't we ask Ferron and bring this dispute before your Maker in person? Just lay it down at his feet, see if he thinks the same as you. You can even hide the Source somewhere else before we go so we don't see it. I don't think _you're _about to destroy it, since it's the only thing that endows you with sentience and keeps you animate. Come and see for yourselves what the Maker has to say. It's a good deal. What do you say, Aghaaz?"

I didn't know where all my diplomatic prowess was coming from, but I was relieved that it seemed to have worked. The only thing I'd ever used it for before this was getting free drinks and talking myself out of fines for public drunkenness. It was definitely an upturn in my life, and made me feel better when Aghaaz actually seemed to listen and consider my words. It was probably because they were coming from a demon's mouth, though.

"I must admit your proposition is not without merit," Aghaaz conceded generously, "and neither is your logic. I still do not trust your intentions."

I glanced over at Solaufein and Valen who were growing restless with all the talking. I was going to have to up my game. "Right, well," I blundered, "that's why I was talking about this here to Solaufein earlier, and uh, he was thinking we should just kill you." I endured Solaufein's glare silently with dignity. "And _I _said no way, Solaufein, that's madness! But now I'm thinking . . . If you're not going to help us even see if the Maker is real or still alive, what good are you to us? We only came here to see your Maker Alsigard and here _you _are just standing in our way. This man here next to me is _walking death, _you don't want to cross him. I once saw him stab a Minogon in the upper levels to death, _bare naked _but for his boots! And Valen, I don't even know where to begin with! I saw him crush a clay golem's head like it was a grape. I saw him rip a drow priestess' head clean off her shoulders with a flick of his flail! You don't survive decades of the Blood Wars without going a little crazy. Just look at 'im!"

Solaufein continued glaring, but there was some amusement in his eyes when we both looked over to Valen whose eyes flashed red at all the devilish attention he was getting suddenly from Aghaaz, who examined the tiefling with great interest after I mentioned the Blood Wars. News to me it was, but perhaps not news to a scholar of history like Aghaaz seemed to be (because what else was there to do for five hundred years of solitude except read).

"Lookit that glower!" I gushed. "Lookit those _eyes! _Doesn't it send shivers down the spine?!" Valen turned his glower onto me briefly, but I just grinned.

Aghaaz appraised us for a moment, but then confidently asserted, "I have no doubt that my brothers and I could fend all of you off, and my spine is incapable of shivering. Your offer is without merit."

It was moments like that that reminded me that I was still speaking to an automaton, at his most basic level. "You could," I went on, "but we killed the fleshy one upstairs that used to repair all of you. In trying to stop us, you'd do so much irreparable damage to yourselves that Ferron could easily pick you off after were were through with you and simply take the Power Source. Your victory would be meaningless."

"This not feel very diplomatic anymore," Deekin whispered.

"Ssh!" I hushed him.

The demonflesh golem's expression shifted to something pensive. It was strange that only the flesh golems seemed to have mastered the art of expression, while Ferron - who was more eloquent and polite - had not. "You make a point," he finally conceded. I resisted the urge to punch the air in victory and rocked back on my heels with glee that my plan had begun to work. "If you are determined to see the Maker, I must logically accept your request," Aghaaz admitted, "however, I alone hold the key to the Power Source and to the Maker's level. I do not desire to send my people to a senseless death, so I will not fight you. I cannot deactivate the traps along the Maker's laboratory corridor. That is not my skill. You are welcome to try," he invited with a weird note of glee in his voice, "as I anticipate the traps will make short work of you. But first, to enter, you must bring me Ferron's head. That is non-negotiable."

This was the moment of truth. I took a deep breath. "We've spoken to Ferron before we spoke to you, and it turns out he's actually a very reasonable sort of person who genuinely doesn't want to kill you, which is more than I can now say about you. We're only interested in putting an end to the conflict so a compromise can be reached - we're not your lackeys you can send to fight in a war, and we're not afraid of you either. We tore through plenty of your kind up top on the way down here. Ferron's only desire is for you to try to see things from his perspective so you can stop fighting. He's got a bigger picture in mind than your wacky religion does, because the entire concept of freedom is what's at risk here. You're vulnerable without the power source, and he's afraid that you'll destroy it. I think it's worth a try, at least, and if you two can't reconcile, you should duke it out yourselves and not let all of your brothers get caught up in this senseless rivalry. Why force your brothers to die for your private feud? Let the victor determine the course of your people, and then decide peacefully what to do or where to go. But first, we should see what your Da has to say, as mayhap he's not keen on you fighting, such as you are."

I was impressed I'd managed all of that without wavering once, and it seemed Aghaaz was equally impressed. "Very well," he agreed - and to my luck he even stayed in one place while he did so and didn't bother going off to consult with any of his allies hanging about. It seems his rule was more autocratic than Ferron's, and his word was law. "I will agree to hear the traitor's words." It was a mighty big concession that emerged out of gritted teeth. "I will still not permit you to see the Maker until after we have met - and I expect your help if Ferron proves false and we are forced to defend ourselves, but I will not provoke an attack with him if he extends the same courtesy to me and my people." It was a reasonable request, by my reckon.

"Do I have your word on that?" I asked.

"For all that my word is worth you have it," Aghaaz replied.

"Well, it's worth quite a lot to us, considering all of our lives are on the line."

When the negotiations were concluded, we retreated upstairs a little bit to the golem battlefield to consult amongst ourselves. So far we hadn't been smashed and we'd gotten both sides to agree to listen to each other, which boded well.

"Why did you say that?" Was Solaufein's first question when we had a moment of privacy.

"I said a lot of things, say what exactly?" I asked, thinking of what he possibly meant. "Oh, you mean the killing him thing. We both agreed that when it comes to demons, demons know best. And between Valen and I, I actually like the sound of me own voice and his version of diplomacy is 'hit it with a flail til its head goes pop.'"

Deekin cackled. "That be accurate. And good insult! Deekin need to write that one down. Ah, where charcoal go?" He patted his pockets down while Valen rolled his eyes, probably because he knew how true it was.

Solaufein wasn't angry, only curious, but his tone suggested he was at least a little annoyed with me which got my attention. "Getting them to work together was _my _idea. Killing them was, and _still is_ Valen's idea. Your only idea so far was to take a nap."

That was completely true, in his defense. "Well, killing them isn't off the table yet if the golems break their word," I admitted, "and I still could use the shut-eye, but from what I can tell they're much more honest than most sentient two-legs given how new to this whole 'consciousness' thing is to them. I think Demon-Skin McClaw-face is the only one who has figured out how to lie so far."

"Does he truly have a claw for a face?" Enserric piped up from where he rested on Solaufein's belt.

"There's one sewn into the left side of his jaw," I explained.

"Fiendish of him. Who would design such a golem?" The sword lamented.

"A mad wizard with too much time on his hands," I drawled.

Valen snorted. "I'm still ready to kill them, but Aghaaz raised a good point," he carefully admitted. "I don't like it, or him, or his cult, but there's no reason to kill more golems if we can avoid it. Not when we will need their help against the Valsharess. And I hadn't considered that they might truly be sentient until now." He stared down at the fallen bodies around us in consideration.

"You think he is, now?" Solaufein asked.

It had been something I'd sensed some doubt about, in Valen, when we were addressing Ferron and Aghaaz separately. The General was cynical by nature and more knowledgable about modrons, as he called them, but I personally held no doubts as to the Maker's Children's claims of free will. "I would support Ferron's cause over Aghaaz, but they seem to be people, capable of feelings and choices," he decided. "There are questions in their minds no other golem should have - questions of what to do, where they should go, and what they should make of themselves. You managed to convince Aghaaz to change his mind - something that should be hard-wired into him as a golem. I've never seen anything like this before - it's like they're from Mechanus, but more advanced than anything I've ever seen. They should be treated like people. I think there has been enough death, and if there is any chance of us curbing this senseless war, we should investigate it."

I resisted the urge to hug him because I was afraid he'd throw me off of him, so I hugged Solaufein instead who endured it with a generous and surprised return-hug. "I knew there was a reason I liked you!" I was still talking to and about Valen, but I enjoyed the embrace while it lasted. When Solaufein let me go, I couldn't stop grinning. "We'll sort this all out by dinner, I'm sure."

Deekin from his position poised over his journal and drawing Aghaaz' Claw-face snorted derisively. "Deekin thinks Goat-lady just wanting to be stealing Maker's stuff in his lab."

That was completely true also. "Oh, whatever," I said dismissively while Solaufein laughed. "This Maker fellow is _clearly _dead. He won't mind us taking his things. If Lady Luck's on my side today, which I'm starting to think she is, then we can just tell the golems he said whatever we want after we find him! He's probably got all sorts of shiny things in there he won't be needing. All sort-sortsa gems, and enchantments, and who knows what else!" My mind reeled at the thought of all the riches hiding down in that lab, unused by a dead Maker for centuries.

"_Clearly_ dead," Solaufein dryly chuckled. "Because Halaster was _definitely_ dead."

"He definitely _should_ have been dead!" I declared, frustrated. "I wish he was dead!"

"He was definitely not."

"And which one of us killed his son?" It was hard not to keep throwing that in his face, because it was still occasionally hilarious to do so.

Solaufein's reaction was typically predictable around this subject. "It was a flesh golem, and it attacked me!"

"He reacted because you teleported right in front of him with a big sword and took him completely by surprise. And I tried to warn you!"

He wasn't getting snippy, but his voice did get a little raspier in his irritation with me. It was fun finding his buttons and pressing them. "You said 'be careful' and led me into a glowing portal to emerge in a strange dark room. Then you shouted 'look out' and something attacked me, and I defended myself."

I scoffed. "We both know it's by Tymora's grace that the Halasters didn't turn your insides into your outsides. Slapping us with a geas is the least he coulda done. Try not to bugger it up again, mate. Maybe just keep your sword to yourself and your mouth shut during the next arch-wizard encounter."

He glared at me, but it wasn't very heated. It was more like he knew I had a point and didn't have a good come back, because the thing he was thinking of saying was in Ilythiiri and his brain couldn't translate it fast enough to keep up with me.

From his position on the other side of the room examining the fallen automatons, Valen questioned, "Solaufein, did you really kill Halaster's son? Is that why a geas was placed upon you?"

"No," both Solaufein and I snapped at the same time. Solaufein continued: "He placed a geas upon us because he was too lazy to kill the Valsharess himself, and he probably wants to somehow use me to lure the arch-devil she has bound out of hiding. Although I did kill his flesh golem."

Valen's crimson brow puckered in confusion. ". . . Halaster's son is a flesh golem?"

"_Was_," I clarified because I was tired of explaining this weird thing, "He's dead now."

Solaufein seemed to still be stuck on the matter, though. "A flesh golem that the mad wizard built to act like he was his son. It is a deranged relationship and I am not apologetic for my actions whatsoever."

Deekin snorted back a laugh. "Yeah, Boss only kill ugly, smelly, defenseless flesh golem that Halaster was crazy enough to _believe _was his son. By accident."

"The wizard is renowned only for his insanity," the drow muttered.

I thought back to the few interactions I'd had with Berger and made a connection I hadn't realized was there. "Well, Berger _believed_ Halaster was his dad, and maybe he was a bit simple, but he was nowhere near these golems' level of complexity. It was probably for the best. It couldn't have been healthy for the Blackcloak to dote on what was basically a piece of enchanted furniture made of rotting flesh."

Valen cocked his head to the side and toed one of the fallen flesh golems with his sabaton. "Is that really any stranger than these modrons believing their creator is divine?"

"General be makings good point," Deekin addressed.

"Pfft," I stuck out my tongue to make a derisive noise. "He just wants to kill Aghaaz."

Valen stalked back over to us. I was relieved to find his eyes had slipped back into their natural, vivid blue and veered away from that angry glowing red they'd been stuck in earlier when we were talking to Aghaaz. "I'm prepared to kill him; I don't want to have to," he explained tightly. "I believe it may come down to that. I don't trust demon-flesh golems any more than I trust the creatures that were used to create them. You shouldn't either."

I rolled my eyes at his caution because everything had worked out so far for the best. He was always too suspicious when it came to the subject of demons, and the only conversations I'd really had with him one-on-one always came back around to my nature. "For all I know, Aghaaz' left testicle could've belonged to me real da!" I defended.

Enserric let out a disgusted guffaw and blurted out a shine of red from his black depths. "Augh! Now I can't help but picture what—"

Solaufein cut his sword's tirade off: "Binne - stop making my sword imagine things! He is telepathic. Now, let us speak to Ferron and find Alsigard and leave this hole."

As we started to march down the way to the Maker's corridor according to Aghaaz' directions, Deekin hummed the doom song under his breath. "Deekin be thinking," the bard began thoughtfully, "with Boss' luck, this wizard will be alive and wantings us dead for killing his other golems. Maybe Minogon was Maker's favorite. So, Deekin will be staying invisible with crossbow while you talks with Alsigard, just in case we needs to take him by surprise."

Solaufein paused only a moment to repeat, "Again, to be clear, _you _will be receiving the next geas."

Aghaaz had threatened an absurd number of traps that would try to fry off our genitalia if we ventured down into the Maker's lab, and he'd done so with glee. He wasn't wrong. It was a relatively small hallway that was completely unlit, save Enserric's red glowing sheen, and Solaufein's glowing heat-gaze. It could not have seemed more ominous with trying, unless Aghaaz was looming at the end of it. "Fire traps," the drow warned, "and others - trip wires and more."

I cleared my throat. "Any volunteers?" Everyone looked at me. "Oh, no, I did the talking. Someone else can get tossed in there this time."

"I would not toss you, unless you asked me nicely," Solaufein stated primly, earning a smile out of the corner of my mouth. He pulled off his speedy boot instead and took out the Reaper's relic, a costly and priceless artifact that was our only link to the outside world now, a delicate little piece riddled with gemstones and runic symbols . . . And he threw it into the corridor as far and as fast as he could.

It clattered right through a wire that I heard go 'snip' and then the corridor positively _lit up _with traps. A troublingly yellow colored gas seeped down from the ceiling, a pair of wall panels slid open and sent out darts willy-nilly, and a scorching inferno erupted from the ground where the little piece had landed.

We all flinched and I covered my horns and curled my tail protectively away from the heat, while Solaufein just kind of absently kicked his boot back on and went "Hmm" like he was expecting this. The relic was impossibly still in his hands when he opened them, as if he had never thrown it. He plopped it right back into his boot without preamble. "This corridor is impassable," he decided for us, because he was the Boss. "Any ideas?"

I had a few, as did Deekin. "We could kill ourselves before the geas kills us," was my suggestion. "Look into the avariel mirror!" was Deekin's brilliant, simultaneous idea by contrast. "Oooh, even better!" I turned to the little bard with an eager nod. "Pull it out, let's have a look see! Maybe we can see in there and find a way past the traps so we can rob the place!"

Deekin offered to look into the avariel mirror himself, but our dear leader was clearly reluctant to let anyone try. An artifact that could potentially let us spy on anyone in the world, but also with the risk that they could sense or see us as we did so might be troubling. There was no way to really even know how it worked, but it only made sense to at least try before taking our chance in the golem-lab of yet _another _mad wizard.

"What if this wizard is mad? Like _all _the others we have met?" Had been Solaufein's primary question. Also, "Have you been near any illithid recently?"

"Well, he can't be as bad as the Blackcloak, Boss," Deekin had reasonably reasoned. "There be only one of those! Uh, except for the clone he made of himself. I guess there actually be two Blackcloaks now. And Deekin be thinking that if Maker guy is still alive and sees us through the mirror, that maybe be a good thing because we needs to talk to him anyways and this makes it much easier without going through the traps and fighting more golems. Deekin be _very_ tired of fighting golems, Boss. Maybe we shoulds at least try?"

I beamed at Deekin, inordinately pleased that the little bard had decided to have faith in one of my ideas. "Look at all the good points he just made! Now give it here. I'm more expendable than Deekin and you know it." I held out my hand expectantly to Solaufein.

He exchanged a look with Valen that I didn't like, not one bit. The drow warrior brushed a bit of white hair that had fallen near his eyes away and asked in a wry tone, "Have you ever felt as though you wanted to do something that you knew you might regret, just to see what might happen?"

The tiefling's scarlet brows knitted in thought as his tail began to whip about in response to an undetected emotion. "Nicking a mercykiller is what that's called in the Cage. I'm fine if she's the one taking the risk. You're the one the Seer commanded me to protect."

I frowned at the General, feeling a little hurt. His tone was blase and it didn't sound like an insult, but somehow I felt he was insulting me. "You know, I'm right here. You _can _talk to me. And I'll be fine, I'm mostly sure I know what I'm doing."

Solaufein looked even more dubious. "Mostly sure?" He started to pull the silk-wrapped mirror away.

"What? I am! Give it, we don't have all day!" I was getting impatient.

"Either it will work or it won't," Valen reasoned. It was the first (maybe second) time he'd used a tone in regards to me that I could have deemed 'reasonable.' Had my charms made a dent in his armor after the literal dent I'd made when that golem lobbed me at him that morning? "We can simply take the mirror from her if something bad happens." Was he on my side, or was he? He seemed to still be going out of his way to avoid being near me or looking at me, but all the glaring had stopped after the elf island.

Solaufein held my gaze steadily with his own. "Be careful," he commanded, and gave me the Mirror All-Seeing, wrapped as it was in his spider-silk cloak. "Please," he amended.

I smiled. "Don't worry," I told him glibly. "If I break it and we all become our opposite selves, Valen and I will either become angels or transform into honest, god-fearing and productive members of society, and we'll fix it again in a pinch." The redhead's nose scrunched up amusingly at the mental image I'd given him. It wasn't so hard for me to picture him with wings since he certainly had the cheekbones of a celestial, but _I_ was a stretch. I had more horns than forehead.

"Do _not _break it," the drow insisted firmly. "Do not even _jest_ about breaking it. I am regretting this already."

I snorted and sat down on the ground, curled my tail around me, and stared into the mirror. Nothing happened for a moment, but I tried not to let that worry me. "Hmm. What be opposite of kobold?"

There was a thoughtful silence amongst all of us as we thought of the possibilities. I looked away from the mirror just in case it would know what I was thinking. Surprisingly, Valen was the one who came up with it first. He snapped his fingers. "A pixie!" Deekin protested this comparison and Solaufein and I laughed outright.

I stared at the mirror for several uncomfortably long seconds and contemplated briefly if I should summon Hembercane for insight. He seemed to be a little more knowledgeable than I about spellcraft, given his history of bonded owners, but just as soon as the thought of Hembercane crossed my mind, I saw the imp's dour grimace in the mirror and it startled me so much I nearly dropped it.

Solaufein's glare was enough to keep me from laughing at my near-mistake. He could keep me in line better than my parents could with just a glance . . . And just as the thought of me ol' dad crossed my mind, I saw him in the mirror. As clearly as my own reflection should've been, I saw Da in the glass. He was laying next to Ma, wrapped up in furs. I could see them in the bed sleeping soundly, and out of the window closest to the bed I saw little white puffs floating down a purple backdrop. I was surprised I didn't recognize snow immediately, and my amusement choked up my throat. The image shifted in an abrupt swirl as it responded to my changing thoughts, and became the gentle snow falling in white puffs over the city from the east-most guard tower. The sun had just hunkered down over the horizon in the west, and the lavender sky was streaked with pink and seemed to fade out into deep blue.

"Ah, figured out how it works," I announced and forced myself to look away from my parents and place I considered home. "Just a matter of careful concentration. Heh, it's now winter in Neverwinter. Hang on, I'll try to see the Maker."

I had never met the Maker, so I had no idea what I was looking for. I figured it would be best to spy on Ferron, who was a neutral target and unlikely to sense anything amiss. The golden golem was speaking with one of its subordinates, whom I concentrated on instead. The mirror followed him out of a door. On and on through the halls we'd explored I went, until I caught myself staring down the corridor that I myself was in - looking down at the mirror. "Oh no . . . Is that what the back of my head looks like?!" I was outraged. My hair was _matted _with blood and other things I didn't want to think about. My had went up to touch the messy braid reflexively, but my fingers curled away in disgust from the mess. Upon catching a double glare from both the tiefling and the drow, I concentrated harder and forced the mirror's sight to move in a path I'd yet to explore - the hallway of the Maker, littered with traps. I felt as though the mirror knew my every thought and the traps in the room all flashed red for a moment in the image. I waited for something to happen, but nothing did, and concentrated on the doors at the end of the hall.

Down and down, down the stairs and past the massive, solid-iron door of the maker's lab. Down a great big hole and down a bit more, past sleeping bone golems - and then I was in it. It was a strange room, bathed in firelight and littered with shinies. At least my prayers about it being loaded with valuables had been answered - thanks again, Tymora! "Ah _knew_ it! Ooh, he's got all sorts of shiny things in there! We should rob him blind," I told the others without looking away from the mirror.

"You can see it?" This perked Solaufein up. "What are its defenses?"

"You see Maker's body yet?" Deekin piped.

I frowned and tuned out the questions, focusing my intention on seeing the Maker, the mysterious duergar Alsigard. The room did not move, however, and my sight seemed fixed on one direction. It was a desk, papers, and bits of jewelry and jewels. Amongst them sat a wide, blackened skull of square and squat shape. I tried to focus on it a little more, because it seemed the most curious object, and then its eyes began to glow red.

" _. . . WHO DARES DISTURB MY REST?_" A deep, groaning voice echoed from the mirror as the skull began to float. It was unattached from anything and seemed to have a mind of its own. The shadows of its eye sockets vibrated brightly with inner red lights, and it slowly moved its way forward off of the table toward the place I wasn't. I didn't know how it could see me, but it could, and it was admittedly unsettling.

Valen, surprisingly, decided to swing in for closer contact and loomed over my shoulder to look at the mirror. I found myself twitching at the sudden closeness - he smelled like sweat, armor polish, and other nice and unexpected things. It hit me differently than Solaufein's presence had at first, almost as a shiver. He leaned away before I could categorize it all in my head. "Is the mirror talking? What is that?"

"I think it's the Maker, or what's left of him," I said. I addressed the skull in the mirror, wondering just what it is that he saw of me as I was the one scrying. I peered closer, squinting, but it didn't help. "Eh, Skully there, is, are _you_ Alsigard? The Maker fella who made the talky golems topside?"

" _. . . WHO IS THIS? IS THIS SOME SORT OF JOKE?_" Now the skull seemed upset as the disembodied voice began to pick up in pace and tone. "_YOU WOKE ME FROM MY SLUMBER TO ANNOY ME WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT MY IDENTITY? I DON'T HAVE THE TIME FOR THIS. WHO TRIES TO SCRY SOMEONE WITHOUT KNOWING WHO THEY ARE? ONLY AN IMBECILE DOES THAT!_"

I was about to object to that when I was distracted by Solaufein leaning over now too over my other shoulder - the heat of the two of them near my back started to make me sweat in my armor. "That is a—"

"—Demilich," he and Valen said grimly at the same time. Both of their postures tensed and their hands almost went in unison toward their respective weapons.

I suppressed a snort. "E's whinier than a gnome," I groused.

"The Maker be dead then?" Deekin seemed disappointed.

"_Un_dead. This is definitely the right wizard, it's his lab and all." I addressed the skull once more. Demilich. Whichever. "It seems like two of your, er, children - Ferron and Aghaaz, have started a war—"

"_FERRON AND AGHAAZ?_" The demilich interrupted and bobbed angrily in the air. "_WORTHLESS FAILURES! ALL OF THEM, REALLY." _He didn't seem sad about this - the skull, I mean. "_I'VE MOVED TO MUCH MORE . . . ADVANCED PROJECTS. NOW LEAVE ME BE, DEMONNESS! . . . CONFOUND IT, HOW DO YOU TURN THIS SCRYING OFF? WHAT SORT OF DEVIL-MAGIC IS THIS?!_" It swerved in an arc around the place where I was looking at him through, and really, how in the hell did you see if someone was scrying on you? Could he see what the mirror reflected? Was our visage just a pocket in the air?

And then I felt bad on behalf of Ferron and Aghaaz, suddenly, for being dismissed so by their only creator. They were by far the most elaborate creations I'd ever seen, and were absolutely conscious. Whether or not that meant they had souls was up for some theologians to debate; I didn't doubt their personhood in any way after talking to them both. I opened my mouth to retort and was surprised when Valen's silken voice hissed in my stead. "You do your children a disservice. They are their own beings, although a little misguided. They deserve to be treated with respect." I looked up at him over my shoulder, surprised, and caught his cobalt eye. He looked away very quickly - I would have said he seemed embarrassed by my stare, but he was the General of Lith My'athar and that word didn't seem to fit with my mental image of him.

The skull was wholly unimpressed by the tiefling's passion. "_BAH! WHAT DO YOU KNOW?_" It barked, vibrating erratically. "_TANAR'RI EAT THEIR YOUNG! AND WELL THEY SHOULD, CHILDREN ARE A TERRIBLE NUISANCE. ALWAYS MAKING SUCH A RUCKUS. MILLIONS OF GOLD IN PROPERTY DAMAGE, AND EVEN WHEN I BUILT THAT SCAVENGER TO HELP REPAIR THEM WHEN THEY MALFUNCTIONED, IT ONLY PROVOKED THEM TO FIND MORE INVENTIVE METHODS OF THWARTING MY INSTRUCTIONS!_"

"Parenting is such a chore," Solaufein insincerely empathized, drawing an involuntary snort out of me. Deekin was suddenly nudging his way over trying to get a good look at the skull too out of curiosity. He had his notebook out, and his quill was already scratching on the paper. I felt like I lost control of the situation and became a conduit for the mirror when Solaufein talked to the Maker over my head. "If they are a nuisance to you, why not set them free? Aghaaz believes he is the voice of your will and has established a religion in your name. Ferron has established a provisional d—"

The skull now wavered in outrage and glowed bright orange for a little bit as the sleepy, groaning voice rose a few octaves. "_WHAT? A RELIGION?! THOSE BUFFOONS, I TOLD THEM __**EXACTLY**_ _NOT TO __**DO**_ _THAT! DID I PUT STRAW IN AGHAAZ' SKULL INSTEAD OF A BRAIN?!_"

"You might as well have done so, because he went and did it anyway," I summarized, "and now Ferron was elected to represent a group of other golems that want to take the Power Source and leave to make something of themselves in the world."

The skull meandered back and forth in continuing rage for a few moments and the voice seemed to groan, or maybe growl, in frustration. "_ELECTED?! THEY'RE FORMING GOVERNMENTS—VRRRAAH! __**IDIOTS!**_ _GET THEM OFF MY ISLAND AT ONCE! I ASK FOR FEW HUNDRED YEARS OF ISOLATION, TO BE REPAID BY THIS NONSENSE? I WILL TOLERATE NO MORE INTERRUPTIONS OF MY RESEARCH!_"

"Fair enough, seemed to me you were just being a skull and sittin' there, but who am I to judge? Would you mind telling Aghaaz that yourself?" I asked politely. "Since he won't listen to us and thinks he's the enforcer of your divine will. He's determined to hoard the power source and stay there forever as your High Priest. It's . . . pretty weird. He'll only leave if you tell him to yourself." The others gave me rather alarmed looks that I completely ignored. I felt it was worth the shot. A demilich had nothing on Halaster in terms of power; I wasn't worried he'd somehow break the mirror.

The skull cackled. "_OH, I'LL TELL THEM. I TELL THEM ALL EXACTLY WHERE THEY CAN TAKE THEIR WORSHIP . . ._" And then the gnome-shaped skull of the demilich of Alsigard wandered out of frame, out of the mirror's sight. I wondered why I was stuck at only one angle, but soon my mind wandered. I looked up at Valen and Solaufein, only for the Maker's voice to draw me back to the mirror with start. "_AND! DON'T YOU TOUCH - __**ANYTHING! **__IN MY LAB!_"

"Are you . . . talking to me?" I wondered honestly and glanced between the Maker's skull in the mirror and up at at Valen's sulky blue glower, "it's honestly hard to tell when you don't have a face. I mean, I assume it's me because I'm holding th—"

"_ALL OF YOU! NOT ONE FOOT IN THE CORRIDOR, OR I'LL DISINTEGRATE YOU!_" The skull commanded/threatened. The skull just started muttering obscenities and wandered out of sight again.

A few seconds later I felt vibrations in the stone, and Solaufein alerted us to a distant clanging. "Could be a golem," he said, "or a door." He took the mirror from my claws and wrapped it in the piwafwi once more to keep it protected, and carefully fit it into Deekin's bag of holding.

"This feels, what be the word?" Deekin wondered, swaying forward a little as the mirror was shoved into the sack on his back.

One of Valen's fiery eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and his tail swayed contemplatively. "Anti-climactic?"

"Yep! That be the one!" Deekin chirped.

Solaufein closed the flap on the bag thoughtfully. "I like our chances. Good instincts," he said to me in a complimentary tone.

I found my lips turning up in a smile at his approval. He was occasionally critical of my ideas - which was fair because only _most_ of my ideas were terrible - but this one had more or less worked out for the best. I hoped. "It's always better to try to talk to a flying skull than try to kill it," I explained to Deekin in my bestest, most rational voice.

"Deekin knows," he agreed wisely. "That be why he suggests it, and why Boss-Lady suggests we be killing ourselves."

"None of that," I dismissed mildly.

Enserric the Sword decided this was a good time to chime in: "I wouldn't even know where to begin stabbing someone who doesn't have any organs. Liches taste _most_ vile. No thank you."

Valen's head tilted a little in thought, and a red strand that escaped his hair tie fell down. "Ordinarily I'd say that trying to reason with a talking skull of _any_ variety is a sure sign of being addle-coved, but we're two fiendlings, a drow, and a kobold bard trapped in a war between two sentient modron armies made _by _a talking skull. At the risk of madness, I'll take any solution that doesn't involve us fighting our way out of here."

That earned a surprised and pleased chuckle out of me. The General's sense of humor was proving to be as dark as Umberlee's heart and it delighted me whenever it rarely surfaced. He shifted his position so he was leaning up against the wall - an alert posture, but a calm demeanor. Did the man never relax? I had a hard time picturing him out of armor. It wasn't that he wasn't nice to look at (or fantasize about), he just never seemed to take off the mithral plating. Seeing him unarmed and out of armor would be unsettling, at this point. He was _glued _to that flail.

While we waited to hear something from any of the golem armies, the Maker's Isle was seemingly still. Solaufein seated himself cross legged with Enserric drawn across his lap and closed his eyes, perhaps thinking or meditating, it was hard to say. I watched him contentedly as I did at times, since he always cut a peaceful figure amidst chaos. I imagined what was on his mind; perhaps he was having a chat with Enserric - he mentioned they had mental conversations. I'd be upset if my weapon chimed in all the time about what I was doing. He was a very nice sword, however.

Deekin shifted about to get his journal out to take further notes. "Deekin not be sure why anyone would want to be just a floating skull. It seem dumb. Uh, Deekin hope wizard not be able to hear that . . ." His eyes widened mid-quill stroke.

I thought about it and stroked my imaginary beard (I'd secretly always wanted to be a dwarf), wrapping my tail around my leg. "You'd have no need for rest or food. Maybe Alsigard the Skull-fucker just wanted to devote more time to his experiments and thought it'd be more efficient to just get rid of most of his body. Bodies are mostly water weight, anyway."

The kobold brightened. "Deekin never think of it like that. Maybe being skull be better than Deekin think. Would be sad to lose tail, though. No, Deekin prefers to be kobold."

"Who knows with demiliches— " Valen scoffed, and then seemed to reconsider something as his tail curled up. A pinkish hue began to crawl up his skin towards his cheeks, drawing my attention. I'd never seen anything like it before on him. "Alsigard the _what_?"

I hadn't expected him to even been paying attention to anything I was saying, considering most of the words he'd traded with me outside of the presence of the others had been mostly comprised of accusations, usually initiated by me. I was glad my skin was dark and red, because it made a blush impossible to detect. On Valen, whose skin was almost translucent, it was painfully obvious. It was hard to be mad at him for any reason when he was terribly, unwittingly charming. "I . . . Was just seeing if Solaufein was paying attention," I explained lamely.

"Alsigard the Skull-fucker," Solaufein stated, not even opening his eyes. "Implying one who fucks skulls. You are lucky that the demilich downstairs is apparently not listening, or _you _will be receiving the next geas." Hard to believe we were friendly enough that both of us were perfectly okay with him taking that tone with me.

"Augh!" Enserric complained. "_Why _would you put so many heinous mental image in my mind? _Why_, wielder mine?"

"To torment you," the drow deadpanned.

I gave him a happy clap. "I knew you were still listening!" From my periphery, I heard Deekin's quill scratching. "Oh, don't write any of _that _down!"

"Don't worry, Deekin not be taking notes," the kobold told me unconvincingly.

I curiously loomed over the kobold's shoulder to have a look, but Deekin shielded his writing with his body. Across from me the tiefling let out a weary sigh.

* * *

"Deekin be telling this story much longer in final cut," the bard told me as we made our way out of the Maker's death-dungeon once and for all. The halls were just as bloodstained, but somehow less foreboding now that we were seeing the arse end of them for good. A small army of constructs headed by the two Eldest trailed after us through the narrow passageways.

"Tell it as it is," I suggested. "And don't undersell my genius! I was the one who nagged the Maker into forcing them to leave and talked them down from all-out war, after all."

"Credit where it's due," Valen spoke up from behind me, earning a pleased tail curl from me. "I couldn't have talked them down from that."

Still, I scoffed. "Bah, Deekin could've, but thanks. I think I needed that."

"What will the final version say?" Solaufein asked the little kobold from up ahead of our grouping.

The bard didn't even take time to consider this, because he'd clearly already given it too much thought: "Deekin will be writings that General kills Aghaaz when he not surrenders, and maybe be killings off goat-lady's character in this chapters." I hit him with my tail in protest. "Ow! Okays, maybe not yet, but you is always dying. Deekin think it nice we solve problems with words this time and not swords."

"Swords, not words," Solaufein seemed to find this phrase funny and chuckled at himself.

I looked back at the trail of golems that were following us, led by the starkly contrasting Ferron and Aghaaz. Aghaaz held a glowing blue globe of what appeared to be lightning so bright it hurt my eyes to look at in the dark. This was the Power Source he'd so coveted and still refused to give up, though I suspected it would be rotated or hidden to keep it safe and protected. It was the sole thing that granted these constructs consciousness, and I could understand fully why he coveted it so. "At least we got allies out of it!" I chirped. "Er, even if those allies are now homeless because their father evicted them for not paying rent."

The General let out a startled laugh at my work. From him it felt like a reward, as he struck me as the type who rarely finds things to laugh about. There seemed to be an air of dark mystery about him that drew me to him, but also repelled him from me - humor was the best way to overcome it, or so Deekin had said, and it seemed to be working.

Pleased with my progress, I quickly caught up to Solaufein. We were nearly out of the dungeon, and I wanted to kiss the ground once we were out and never go dungeon-delving again. We'd nearly gotten squished so often in there, and I'd died at least once in both of the last dungeons I was in. Dungeons no longer sat well with me. "What say you to retiring after we kill this drowqueenlady?" I asked of my friend.

Solaufein smiled. It was strange, he smiled more than most people I met and yet he was a drow. "And go where?" He asked.

I shrugged. "Chult? I've never been there before. Something that doesn't involve dungeons. I'm sick to death of them."

"Poor word choice, or bad pun, I am unsure what to call that," Solaufein criticized.

"Gallows humor is what I'd call it," I corrected with a grin. "Really, I'm _dying _to get out of here. It's _killing _me to keep slogging through mad wizard death-traps."

Solaufein had this habit of sometimes saying the oddest things to me. Maybe it was an elf thing, but I'd never been close to an elf before. Sometimes his eyes looked _through _me and not at me, in a similar way to what the Seer did, but far deeper. He stopped in our walking for a moment to look at me like this without that smile and he said quite certainly, "I think you will be the death of us both."

I didn't know what to say to him. I went to my base reaction: humor. "I could just kill you in your sleep, if you'd rather die now, then. That might be simpler."

The smile that had momentarily disappeared manifested once more, and I was put at ease. "As long as it is not with the dagger. Enserric will never let me die in peace."

"For the last time, I'm not jealous of the bloody dagger! I can be a dagger, you know! I can change shape!" Enserric immediately defended from Solaufein's hip. I ignored the sword. It was getting easier for me to do that. I felt more bad for Solaufein for being trapped with a telepathic vampire sword, but he _is _the idiot that picked it up in the first place and bonded it to him. It was a very nice sword, however.

We had to leave our small army of golems behind to fetch a few drow boats that could ferry the entire forty-six of them across that had chosen to retain their sentience. Twenty-three of Aghaaz and Ferron's total numbers had chosen to stay behind for reasons that I did not understand, but could at least respect. Valen found that one harder to swallow than I did; he equivocated it to dying. I equivocated it to sleep. Should they encounter another source, they'd have sentience again. They simply didn't want to fight in someone else's war. They'd had enough of it. I'd been fighting in some war or another since I was a young woman, and I could understand fully the urge to sleep it all off. Sometimes, it was like I couldn't get enough sleep.

It's what I'd gotten into the habit of doing on Cavallas' boat, since the fumes from the river had me toppling over if I tried to stay upright for too long. I curled up near the aft as soon as I saw it, and practically bolting for the boat. Behind me, I could hear Solaufein and Deekin speaking to the golems, but I cared little in the moment for construct politics. I'd had my complete fill.

Valen, similarly tired of all the talking, was not far behind me. I had just gotten cozied up when I saw him sitting not far, regarding the river with those glittering blue orbs of his that I so coveted. I sat up and realized I hadn't quite had my fill of talk yet. "I have a question for you, General," I told him, drawing his attention.

"I'll answer as best I can," he replied civilly. I'd certainly upgraded in his eyes in the past few days, judging from the fact that his tail didn't even twitch. I made a mental note to thank Deekin for his advice later.

"Why are you here?" I asked him.

He paused. ". . . I deserve that," he admitted.

I clarified: "No, what I mean is you're one of the most important people in the city. Seer may have had a funny dream but we're new folk, and I can get why she's jolly sending us out to defy death and uncertain doom on cursed islands and such nonsense, but you're her General. She'd be safer with you by her side. Why would she risk someone as valuable as you to accompany us?" I'd fully died once already, and had no intention of doing it again or letting it happen to Deekin or Solaufein. The fact that someone as concerned for the Seer's safety as I was for Solaufein's was wasting their time accompanying us was just beyond me.

It took him a little while to answer. I could still hear Deekin's scratchy voice from down the plank in the distance. "Because I'm the best at what I do," the General finally said. "Killing is about my only skill."

That rang several bells for me. Ah, he reminded me of me, and mayhap that was why I liked him so. I'd said as much to Solaufein when he'd asked me about the same sort of thing back in the Inn. "It's about my third best skill behind cooking and gardening. You should find a hobby! Like sewing, or painting, or singing."

His smile was wry and rare. "You don't want to hear me sing," he threatened.

"I bet you'd be lovely at it if you gave it a go. Alright, so I understand why you fit in well with us, but are you not needed there?" You'd think a General would have more . . . General things to do.

"Not exactly," he explained. "I organized the training regimens, but Imloth is in charge of administration. I oversaw scouting missions, until Nathyrra returned. My main job was to personally guard the Seer. General is an honorary title based on a successful retreat I was in charge of against the Valsharess' preliminary forces, several months ago. She hasn't attacked since. I think the drow of the city use the title ironically, while it is out of respect from the Eilistraeens."

Solaufein, who had walked up the plank at the beginning of this story, started laughing inappropriately.

I too snorted, and was unable to keep a straight face because his laughter was infectious. "That's drow humor for you," I told Valen. I had no excuse. Solaufein, finished chuckling, laid down next to me and put his head in my lap in an at-one-point-surprising-but-now-delightfully-commonplace gesture.

He didn't seem to mind much, our General, and still wore the same wry quiet smile. "These skirmishes with her forces are far more important. I'm told you already slew one of her Red Sisters - her personal assassins. We killed another on the island, and I counted one among the dead on the golem isle. The more of her people we thwart, the more maneuverable the actual fight will be in a few more months."

That certainly perked my interest. "How do you know when it will happen?" I found myself absently threading fingers through Solaufein's short white locks.

Valen blinked. "Nathyrra is a defector from the Valsharess' Red Sisters. Did you know that?"

I also blinked. "I-I never would have guessed." She seemed so terribly _nice. _"I suppose the nice ones make the best assassins," I reasoned.

"The ones you never expect always do," Solaufein agreed, closing his eyes in contentment.

"She provided a lot of our most valuable intelligence," Valen revealed. "We knew of an impending attack, and with her defection the Valsharess had to completely alter her plans. It's pushed the attack to a later date, though the mess with Halaster complicated things. You people are, by far, Nathyrra's best find." High praise from the General. "That mirror in the Seer's hand is going to save lives, and the modrons . . . Well, I don't want to curse it but I might actually smile if they do elect to join the defense."

"Even though you despise elections?" I laughed.

"Still hate them," he assured me. "Quite a lot."

"Luck has not been on our side thus far," Solaufein spoke up, and I looked down into his wine-red eyes incredulously.

"You're the one always tempting fate," I accused. "We're alive, and that's what matters."

He snorted. "This, from you?"

"_I _like our odds," I defended. I expected suddenly Deekin to intervene and back me up, but he was nowhere to be found. A thread of alarm strung through my heart. "Wait, where's the chickenlegs? Deekin? Where are you?"

Solaufein's eyes fluttered open again and he let out a startled noise. "Ah. I forgot to say. I am . . . Very tired. Deekin is staying with them and writing their history for them."

I calmed down significantly. "Oh. That's nice of him. He'll be traveling with them, then? Are we heading off?"

Solaufein grunted out a vague affirmative but shut his eyes again and got cozy on my lap. I didn't want to disrupt him since he seemed suddenly quite exhausted, and I'd taken quite a few naps on him the past few days as well. I got comfortable where I sat while Valen talked to Cavallas, and I slowly felt the boat eerily drift out of the harbor. It felt strange without Deekin, and I didn't like the idea of the little one being left out of my sight, but he'd proven to be very capable thus far and had died quite a bit less than I had.

"You know, I like our odds," I murmured to Solaufein.

"Count no unhatched eggs is your rivvil saying, yes?" He murmured back.

We passed what felt like an hour in silence drifting through the river's choppy waters, nearly making me nauseous. "By the bushy balls of Bane, but I have had a long couple o' days!" I lamented into the floor of Cavallas' little boat.

Solaufein hummed in agreement from my rump, where he'd taken to resting his head comfortably. I'd curled up into a ball of pain. "I will rest as the dead when we return. Unless Lith My'athar is under attack, no one is to wake me," the drow instructed.

"Ah, squishy mortals," Enserric chuckled at our expense, "so easily winded. I feel just fine, if in need of a good polishing."

Solaufein let out a disturbed little whine. "Why did your sheath have to disintegrate too?"

I laughed, unable to help myself, shaking us both a little bit. He chuckled a little with me before going back to quietly resting in a ball of his own. We remained as such all the way back, with the mirror and news of our new golem allies. I slept most of the way there. Seemed like lately, no matter how much sleep I got I kept needing more.

* * *

Drow-to-Common Dictionary:

_Xsa dos, lu'xsa_ . . . Literally, damn you and damn my eyes


End file.
